376   02M 


1 


GIFT   OF 
MICHAEL  REESE 


• 


TV  -703 

HISTORY 


THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON 

IN  ALL  AGES, 

AND  PARTICULARLY  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 
FROM  COLONIAL  TIMES  TO  1891. 

ALSO  A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF 

EARLY  COAL  MINING  «IN'  THE  UNITED  STATES 

AND  A  FULL  ACCOUNT  OF  THE 

INFLUENCES    WHICH    LONG   DELAYED   THE   DEVELOPMENT  OF 
ALL   AMEKICAN   MANUFACTURING   INDUSTRIES. 


BY 

JAMES  M.  SWANK, 

» / 

SECRETARY    AND    GENERAL  MANAGER    OF   THE  AMERICAN    IRON   AND    STEEL 
ASSOCIATION    FOR   TWENTY*  YEARS,   FROM  1872   TO    1892. 


SECOND    EDITION,    THOROUGHLY  REVISED   AND    GREATLY  ENLARGED. 


PHILADELPHIA: 
THE   AMERICAN    IRON   AND   STEEL   ASSOCIATION, 

NO.  261   SOUTH  FOURTH   STREET. 


Entered,  according  to  act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1891, 

BY    JAMES    M.    SWANK, 
In  the  office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


Printed  by 

ALLEN,    LANE    &    SCOTT, 

Nos.  229-231  South  Fifth  Street, 

Philadelphia. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


IN  presenting  to  iron  and  steel  manufacturers  and  to 
others  a  second  edition  of  the  History  of  the  Manufacture  of 
Iron  in  All  Ages  I  copy  from  the  preface  to  the  first  edition, 
which  appeared  in  1884,  the  following  sentences,  explanatory 
of  the  considerations  which  led  to  its  publication. 

"  No  historical  record  of  the  iron  industry  of  the  scope  of 
that  which  is  here  presented  has  been  undertaken  by  any  of 
the  authoritative  writers  upon  iron  and  steel.  Such  standard 
works  as  those  of  Alexander,  Overman,  Percy,  and  Bauerman 
are  more  technical  than  historical,  while  the  excellent  his- 
tory of  Mr.  Scrivenor  was  published  more  than  forty  years 
ago,  and  relates  almost  entirely  to  the  iron  industry  of  Great 
Britain.  None  of  the  works  mentioned  devote  much  atten- 
tion to  the  growth  of  the  American  iron  industry.  Most  of 
them,  indeed,  were  written  before  our  iron  industry  became 
especially  noticeable  for  either  enterprise  or  productiveness. 
The  history  of  that  industry,  written  from  a  sympathetic 
standpoint  and  with  a  full  knowledge  of  details,  and  par- 
ticularly with  a  knowledge  of  its  marvelous  growth  in  the 
last  few  decades,  had  yet  to  be  written,  and  this  service  I 
have  endeavored  to  perform  in  the  present  volume  in  con- 
nection with  the  history  of  the  manufacture  of  iron  in  other 
countries.  I  have  aimed  especially  to  preserve  in  chrono- 
logical order  a  record  of  the  beginning  of  the  iron  industry 
in  every  country  and  in  every  section  of  our  own  country, 
and  to  follow  this  record  with  a  circumstantial  account  of 
the  introduction  into  our  country  of  all  modern  methods  of 
manufacturing  iron  and  steel.  Names  of  persons  and  places, 
exact  dates,  authentic  statistics,  and  accomplished  results 
have  been  preferred  to  technical  details,  although  these  have 
not  been  neglected. 

"  In  the  collection  of  the  materials  for  this  volume  I  have 
been  exceedingly  fortunate  in  possessing  a  personal  acquaint- 


IV  PREFACE. 

ance  with  most  of  the  leading  actors  in  the  wonderful  de- 
velopment of  our  American  iron  industry  during  the  pres- 
ent century,  and  in  learning  from  their  own  lips  and  from 
their  own  letters  many  of  the  incidents  of  that  development. 
It  is  the  exact  truth  to  say  that,  if  the  preparation  of  this 
history  had  been  delayed  for  a  few  years,  it  could  not  have 
been  written,  for  many  of  these  pioneers  are  now  dead." 

The  reasons  for  the  appearance  of  the  first  edition  hav- 
ing been  given  above  I  now  add  that  this  second  and  last 
edition  has  been  prepared  because  much  new  information 
relating  to  the  early  iron  history  of  our  own  country  and  of 
other  countries  has  come  into  my  possession  since  1884,  and 
because  seven  succeeding  years  of  great  activity  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  world's  iron  and  steel  industries  have  been 
productive  of  important  statistical  and  other  results  which 
are  eminently  worthy  of  preservation  in  a  condensed  and 
permanent  form.  The  second  edition  contains  132  pages  of 
historical  details  more  than  the  first  edition.  In  the  first 
edition  there  were  48  chapters.  Nearly  every  chapter  in  that 
edition  has  been  in  part  rewritten.  In  the  present  edition 
there  are  63  chapters.  Among  the  entirely  new  chapters  of 
the  second  edition  is  one  relating  to  the  early  discoveries  of 
coal  in  the  United  States,  and  another  detailing  the  connec- 
tion of  the  Washington  and  Lincoln  families  with  the  manu- 
facture of  iron  in  colonial  times.  All  accessible  statistical  in- 
formation relating  to  the  world's  production  of  iron,  steel, 
coal,  and  iron  ore  has  been  brought  down  to  the  latest  pos- 
sible periods. 

Due  credit  is  given  in  the  text  to  the  printed  authori- 
ties which  have  been  consulted.  My  thanks  are  due  to  the 
friends  who  have  assisted  me  in  many  ways  in  the  collection 
and  verification  of  the  fresh  historical  and  statistical  mate- 
rials which  are  now  presented.  I  also  express  my  obliga- 
tions to  my  proof-readers,  Mr.  William  M.  Benney  and  Mr. 
William  G.  Gray,  who  have  with  great  pains  assisted  me  to 
guard  against  all  errors  of  a  serious  character. 

PHILADELPHIA,  January  1,  1892. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 
THE  EARLIEST  USE  OF  IRON. 

Iron  first  made  in  Asia  and  in  Northern  Africa— Evidences  of  the  early  use  of  iron  by 
the  Egyptians,  the  Chaldeans,  the  Babylonians,  and  the  Assyrians— Iron  and  steel 
frequently  referred  to  in  the  Old  Testament— Known  to  the  Medes  and  Persians  and 
to  the  people  of  India,  China,  Japan,  and  Corea— Decay  of  the  iron  and  steel  indus- 
tries of  Asia  and  Africa, Pages  1-10 

CHAPTER  II. 
THE  EARLY  USE   OF  IRON  IN  EUROPE. 

Grecian  fables  concerning  iron  and  steel — Both  metals  frequently  mentioned  in  the  writ- 
ings of  Homer,  Hesiod,  Herodotus,  and  other  early  Grecian  writers— Evidences  of  the 
early  manufacture  and  use  of  iron  and  steel  by  the  Greeks— Made  by  the  Etruscans 
and  the  Romans ;  also  in  Scythia,  Noricum,  Moravia,  and  Hungary— The  early  iron 
and  steel  industries  of  Spain  and  the  Basque  provinces— Of  France,  Belgium,  Germany, 
Holland,  Switzerland,  Austria,  Sweden  and  Norway,  Russia,  and  Finland— The  Krupps 
of  Essen— The  Russian  iron  industry  in  the  eighteenth  century, Pages  11-32 

CHAPTER  III. 
BEGINNING  OF  THE  BRITISH  IRON  INDUSTRY. 

Iron  known  to  the  Britons  before  Csesar's  invasion  but  not  much  used— Made  by  the 
Romans  in  many  parts  of  Britain— Remains  of  Roman  iron  works  still  to  be  seen— 
Iron  made  in  Britain  by  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  the  Danes— The  British  iron  industry 
extended  by  the  Normans— Greatly  promoted  in  the  reign  of  Edward  III.— Character- 
istics of  the  British  iron  industry  in  the  13th  and  14th  centuries— The  smith  in  Eng- 
lish history— The  first  use  of  cannon  in  England, Pages  33-44 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  BRITISH  IRON  INDUSTRY  FROM  THE  FIFTEENTH  TO  THE 
NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 

The  manufacture  of  iron  in  England  greatly  extended  about  the  beginning  of  the  15th 
century— Introduction  of  blast  furnaces  into  England— " Many  great  guns"  cast  in 
Sussex-Wire  first  drawn  by  a  mill  in  England  in  1568— Invention  of  the  slitting  mill- 
Birmingham  in  the  time  of  Henry  VIII.— The  art  of  tinning  iron  introduced  into 
England  from  the  Continent  in  1670— Growing  scarcity  of  wood  for  charcoal  in  Eng- 
land in  the  16th  and  17th  centuries— Only  59  furnaces  left  in  England  and  Wales  in 
1740— England  a  large  importer  of  iron  from  Sweden  in  the  17th  and  18th  centuries 
and  from  America  and  Russia  in  the  18th  century— First  use  of  coal  in  the  British  iron 
industry— Henry  Cort's  invention  of  the  puddling  furnace  and  grooved  rolls— Other 
innovations— Beginning  of  the  British  steel  industry— Sheffield  in  1615— Biographical 
notices  of  some  distinguished  men  connected  with  the  British  iron  trade,  Pages  45-55 

CHAPTER  V. 

THE  IRON  INDUSTRY  OF  WALES,  IRELAND,  AND  SCOTLAND. 

Iron  made  in  Wales  under  the  Romans— Extension  of  the  iron  industry  of  Wales  in  the 
.      16th  century— Merthyr  Tydvil  an  iron  centre— Iron  made  in  Ireland  in  the  reigns  of 


V  CONTENTS. 

Elizabeth  and  James  I.,  and  afterwards— The  iron  industry  of  Ireland  extinct  in  1840— 
Iron  scarce  in  Scotland  in  the  middle  ages— Remains  of  ancient  iron  works  in  Scot- 
land described  by  W.  Ivison  Macadam— Beginning  of  the  modern  iron  industry  of 
Scotland— Carron  Furnace— The  Devon  Iron  Works Pages  56-61 

CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  BRITISH  IRON  INDUSTRY  BUILT  UP  BY  BRITISH 
INVENTIVE  GENIUS. 

The  18th  century  begins  a  new  era  in  the  British  iron  industry— Great  Britain  becomes 
the  first  iron  manufacturing  country — The  inventions  of  Payne  and  Hanbury,  of 
Darby,  Huntsman,  Smeaton,  Cort,  Watt,  Stephenson,  Neilson,  Crane,  and  Nasmyth— 
Also  at  a  later  day  of  Bessemer,  Mushet,  and  Charles  William  and  Frederick  Sie- 
mens  Pages  62-64 

CHAPTER  VII. 
EARLY  PROCESSES  IN  THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  AND  STEEL. 

Description  of  the  rude  direct  processes  of  manufacturing  iron  which  were  used  by  the 
ancients— They  are  still  used— Goatskin  bellows— The  present  method  of  making  steel 
in  India — Methods  of  making  iron  in  China,  Cambodia,  Corea,  and  Japan — Japanese 
and  Corean  bellows  described— Iron  made  in  Belgium  and  England  in  the  days  of  the 
Romans  without  an  artificial  blast — A  refinery  forge  described  by  Virgil — Diodorus 
and  Pliny  describe  the  early  furnaces  of  Southern  Europe— The  Catalan  forge  of 
Spain — The  first  mention  of  coal — Used  in  Anglo-Saxon  times — Were  the  Greeks  and 
Romans  familiar  with  cast  iron? Pages  65-79 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

MEDIEVAL   AND  EARLY   MODERN  PROCESSES   IN  THE   MANU- 
FACTURE OF  IRON  AND  STEEL. 

Revival  of  the  iron  industry  in  Europe  in  the  8th  century— The  wolf  furnace,  or  stuck- 
ofen,  first  mentioned — The  osmund  furnace — The  blauofen  and  flussofen — The  hochofen — 
The  blast  furnace  in  use  about  the  beginning  of  the  14th  century— The  Catalan  forge 
and  the  German  bloomary  in  general  use— Description  by  Dr.  Parsons  of  an  English 
blast  furnace  and  refinery  forge  of  the  17th  century— Also  by  Walter  Burrell— Puddling 
furnaces  and  coke  blast  furnaces  not  used  on  the  Continent  until  the  19th  century- 
Leather  and  wooden  bellows  for  blowing  blast  furnaces— The  trompe,  or  water-blast— 
Origin  of  the  rolling  mill— Slitting  and  rolling  mills  as  "late  improvements  "—John 
Houghton  describes  a  slitting  mill— Mechanical  features  of  the  English  iron  industry 
at  the  beginning  of  the  18th  century— Professor  Akerman's  account  of  the  origin  of 
the  slitting  mill  and  rolling  mill— Various  ancient  and  modern  methods  of  making 
steel— Agricola  describes  the  early  German  method— Thomas  Turner's  description  of 
cemented  steel— Percy,  Griiner,  and  other  authorities  on  steel  quoted— Dud  Dudley's 
account  of  the  foot-blast— Ancient  and  modern  methods  of  producing  steel  compared 
—The  bauernofen, "...  Pages  80-99 

CHAPTER  IX. 

FIRST   ATTEMPT   BY   EUROPEANS   TO   MANUFACTURE   IRON   IN 
THE  UNITED  STATES. 

Iron  made  in  northern  latitudes  only— Not  known  to  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  Amer- 
ica except  when  of  meteoric  origin — First  discovery  of  iron  ore  in  the  Atlantic  colo- 
nies made  in  North  Carolina  in  1585— Iron  ore  sent  from  Virginia  to  England  in  1608— 
An  iron  enterprise  on  Falling  Creek,  Virginia,  undertaken  in  1619— Destroyed  by  the 
Indians  in  1622  before  it  had  made  any  iron— No  further  attempts  to  make  iron  in 
Virginia  for  nearly  a  hundred  years— The  site  of  the  Falling  Creek  enterprise  de- 
scribed by  R.  A.  Brock,  of  Richmond Pages  100-107^ 


CONTENTS.  yii 

CHAPTER  X. 

BEGINNING  OF  THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  THE  NEW 
ENGLAND  COLONIES. 

The  first  successful  iron  enterprise  in  America  established  by  Thomas  Dexter,  Robert 
Bridges,  and  others  at  Lynn,  Massachusetts,  in  1645,  when  a  blast  furnace  was  put  in 
operation,  followed  in  1648  by  a  forge  at  the  same  place— Full  description  of  these 
pioneer  iron  works— The  site  of  these  early  iron  works  described— The  first  iron  ar- 
ticle made  in  America  still  preserved— Joseph  Jenks— Henry  and  James  Leonard— 
"Where  you  can  find  iron  works  there  you  will  find  a  Leonard  "—A  furnace  and  forge 
built  at  Braintree,  in  Massachusetts— The  next  iron  enterprise  in  New  England  estab- 
lished near  Taunton— James  Leonard  and  his  sons  go  to  Taunton— George  Hall— Other 
members  of  the  Leonard  family— King  Philip— "John  Ruck  and  others  of  Salem"— 
Iron  made  at  Concord,  Rowley  Village,  Topsfield,  and  Boxford,  all  in  Massachusetts— 
The  Whittington  Iron  Works— The  Chartley  Iron  Works— King's  Furnace— The  Hope- 
well  Iron  Works— Iron  works  at  New  Haven  established  by  Captain  Thomas  Clarke, 
John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  and  others  in  1658— Iron  made  in  Rhode  Island  as  early  as  1675, 
when  a  forge  at  Pawtucket  was  destroyed  by  the  Indians, Pages  108-119 

CHAPTER  XI. 
EXTENSION  OF  THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  NEW  ENGLAND. 

The  first  furnace  in  Plymouth  county,  Massachusetts— Lambert  Despard  and  the  Barkers— 
The  Bound  Brook  and  Drinkwater  iron  works — The  various  enterprises  of  Hugh  Orr — 
The  first  cast-iron  tea-kettle— The  first  slitting-mill  in  the  colonies— Douglass's  descrip- 
tion of  the  iron  industry  of  New  England  in  1750 — Extension  of  the  iron  industry  into 
Western  Massachusetts  about  1750— Rapidly  extended  in  Eastern  Massachusetts— De- 
scription of  Federal  Furnace  in  1804— The  bog  and  pond  ores  of  Massachusetts— The 
first  steel  works  in  Massachusetts— Eliphalet  and  Jonathan  Leonard— Iron  enterprises 
in  Rhode  Island  before  the  Revolution— Stephen  Hopkins,  the  signer  of  the  Declara- 
tion, and  General  Nathanael  Greene  made  iron — Hope  Furnace— Cranston  and  Cumber- 
land Hill— The  Salisbury  iron  district  in  Connecticut— Early  iron  enterprises  at  Lime 
Rock  and  Lake ville— Colonel  Ethan  Allen  an  iron  manufacturer  at  Lakeville— Early 
iron  enterprises  on  Mount  Riga— Prominence  of  the  Salisbury  district— Milo  Barnum 
and  William  H.  Barnum— The  Holleys— Other  early  iron  enterprises  in  Connecticut- 
Connecticut  the  first  of  the  colonies  to  make  steel— Early  iron  enterprises  in  Maine, 
New  Hampshire,  and  Vermont— The  early  nail  and  tack  industry  of  New  England- 
Nails  made  in  chimney  corners— The  first  nail-cutting  machine Pages  120-135 

CHAPTER  XII. 
EARLY  IRON  ENTERPRISES  IN  NEW  YORK. 

The  early  Dutch  settlers  of  New  York  did  not  make  iron— Philip  Livingston  establishes 
the  first  iron  works  in  New  York  on  Ancram  creek  before  1740— Lawrence  Scrawley's 
plating  forge  at  Wawayanda,  in  Orange  county,  built  about  1745— Other  early  enter- 
prises in  Orange  county— The  Townsends— The  great  iron  chain  across  the  Hudson 
in  1778  which  prevented  British  vessels  from  passing  West  Point— The  Sterling  Iron 
Works  of  the  Townsends  described-Early  iron  works  in  Dutchess,  Westchester,  Put- 
nam, and  Suffolk  counties— Development  of  the  Champlain  district  about  1800— Early 
iron  enterprises  in  other  parts  of  New  York-John  Brinkerhoff-Erastus  Corning-The 
Piersons  at  Ramapo— Henry  Burden  and  his  inventions Pages  136-145 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
EARLY  IRON  ENTERPRISES  IN  NEW  JERSEY. 

The  first  iron  works  in  New  Jersey  established  at  Tinton  Falls,  in  Monmouth  county, 
about  1674— The  Leonards  of  Massachusetts— Development  of  the  magnetic  ores  of 
Northern  New  Jersey  about  1710  at  Whippany— Early  iron  works  at  Morristown— The 


Vlll  CONTENTS. 

Dickerson  mine — Many  early  iron  works  in  Northern  New  Jersey  described  by  Dr. 
Joseph  F.  Tuttle  and  Hon.  Edmund  D.  Halsey— Peter  Hasenclever  and  the  Ringwood 
Company — Robert  Erskine — Lord  Stirling,  John  Jacob  Faesch,  and  others — The  Hiber- 
nia  and  Mount  Hope  furnaces— The  Fords— Early  iron  works  in  Andover  township 
in  Sussex  county — Whitehead  Humphreys — Durham  boats — The  Union  Iron  Works,  and 
Oxford,  Sterling,  Ogden's,  and  Mount  Holly  furnaces— William  Allen  and  Joseph  Tur- 
ner— Early  iron  works  in  Southern  New  Jersey — Batsto  and  Atsion  furnaces — Charles 
Read— William,  Jesse,  and  Samuel  Richards— Mark  Richards,  or  Reichert— Old  Boonton 
slitting  mill  in  the  Revolution— Benjamin  and  David  Reeves— The  first  rolling  mill 
in  New  Jersey— Peter  Cooper,  Abram  S.  Hewitt,  and  Frederick  J.  Slade— Dr.  Morse's  de- 
scription of  the  iron  industry  of  New  Jersey  in  1795 Pages  146-162 

CHAPTER  XIV. 
BEGINNING  OF  THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  PENNSYLVANIA. 

Iron  not  made  in  Pennsylvania  until  after  the  arrival  of  William  Penn  in  1682— Penn 
encouraged  the  opening  of  iron  and  other  mines — First  iron  made  in  Pennsylvania 
experimentally  before  1692,  but  at  what  place  is  not  known— The  first  historic  iron 
works  in  Pennsylvania  established  by  Thomas  Rutter,  an  English  Quaker,  on  the 
Manatawny,  in  Berks  county,  in  1716— Rutter's  enterprise  was  a  bloomary,  probably 
called  Manatawny  Forge— Coventry  Forge,  on  French  creek,  in  Chester  county,  built 
by  Samuel  Nutt,  also  an  English  Quaker,  in  1717  or  1718,  the  second  iron  enterprise 
in  Pennsylvania— Colebrookdale  Furnace,  in  Berks  county,  built  by  a  company,  of 
which  Thomas  Rutter  was  a  member,  about  1720,  the  third  iron  enterprise— Thomas 
Potts,  Jr.— Pool  Forge— "A  person  named  Kurtz  "—Durham  Furnace  built  in  1727— 
Other  early  iron  enterprises  in  Eastern  Pennsylvania  established  between  1725  and 
1750— In  1728  there  were  "four  furnaces  in  blast  in  the  colony  "—Reading  Furnace 
on  French  creek — William  Branson — Samuel  Nutt,  Jr. — Benjamin  Franklin  invents 
the  Franklin  stove  in  1742— Warwick  Furnace— The  Vincent  Steel  Works— The  Wind- 
sor Forges— John,  David,  and  Robert  Jenkins— Mrs.  Martha  J.  Nevin— Valley  Forge 
and  its  history— The  iron  enterprises  of  William  and  Mark  Bird— Charming  Forge- 
George  Ege— Oley  Furnace— A  forge  on  Cram  creek,  in  Delaware  county,  built  about 
1742,  by  John  Crosby  and  Peter  Dicks,  which  "ruined  Crosby's  family" — Sarura  Iron 
Works  built  as  early  as  1742— John  Taylor— "A  plating  forge  to  work  with  a  tilt-ham- 
mer" in  Byberry  township,  Philadelphia  county,  in  1750 — Two  steel  furnaces  in  Phila- 
delphia in  1750,  and  others  built  before  the  Revolution, Pages  163-178 

CHAPTER  XV. 

THE   MANUFACTURE    OF   IRON    IN   PENNSYLVANIA   EXTENDED 
TO  THE  SUSQUEHANNA. 

Elizabeth' Furnace,  built  in  1750  by  John  Huber,  a  German,  the  first  iron  enterprise  in  the 
present  county  of  Lancaster— Baron  Stiegel  one  of  its  early  owners— Robert  Coleman 
a  later  owner— Pool  Forge  built  by  James  Old  about  1765— His  other  iron  enter- 
prises— Biographical  sketches  of  James  Old  and  Robert  Coleman — Cyrus  Jacobs — Peter 
Grubb  builds  Cornwall  Furnace  in  1742— His  other  iron  enterprises— His  sons,  Curtis 
and  Peter — Martic  Furnace  and  Forge — Hopewell  and  Speedwell  forges — The  iron  in- 
dustry crosses  the  Susquehanna  as  early  as  1756, Pages  179-185 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

CHARACTERISTICS    OF  THE   EARLY   IRON  INDUSTRY   OF  PENN- 
SYLVANIA. 

In  1750  Pennsylvania  was  the  most  advanced  of  all  the  colonies  in  the  manufacture  of 
iron — Cornwall,  Warwick,  and  Reading  furnaces  were  large  structures  for  their  day — 
Description  of  these  furnaces— Also  of  the  workmen  employed  at  the  early  furnaces 
and  forges  of  Pennsylvania— The  patriarchal  character  of  early  Pennsylvania  iron- 
masters—"  Good  old  colony  times," Pages  186-190 


CONTENTS.  jx 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

THE   MANUFACTURE   OF   IRON  IN  PENNSYLVANIA   AFTER  THE 

REVOLUTION. 

First  iron  enterprises  in  the  Lehigh  Valley  undertaken  after  1800— William  Henry's 
bloomary  forge  near  Nazareth— Hampton  Furnace  near  Shimersville— The  Heim- 
bachs— Samuel  Helfrick  and  the  Balliets— A  rolling  mill  built  at  South  Easton  by 
John  Stewart  and  others  in  1836— Bloomaries  in  Carbon  county— The  Cheltenham 
Rolling  Mill  built  in  1790— Benjamin  Longstreth  establishes  the  'first  iron  enterprise 
at  Phoenixville  in  1790— Clemens  Rentgen  and  his  novel  iron  enterprises— Early  iron 
enterprises  in  Schuylkill  county— Federal  Slitting  MiU  built  by  Isaac  Pennock  in 
1795— Brandywine  Rolling  Mill  and  its  successor,  the  Lukens  Rolling  Mill— Dr.  Charles 
Lukens— Mrs.  Rebecca  W,  Lukens— Mount  Hope  Furnace  and  other  iron  enterprises  in 
Lancaster,  Lebanon,  and  York  counties— The  Reynolds  family— Early  iron  enterprises  in 
Adams,  Franklin,  and  Cumberland  counties— Thaddeus  Stevens— The  Chambers  broth- 
ers—The Haldeman  family— Michael  Ege— Early  iron  enterprises  in  Dauphin  county 
and  in  the  Upper  Susquehanna  Valley— The  Scrantons— The  enterprises  of  Karthaus 
&  Geissenhainer  in  Clearfield  county— Other  early  iron  enterprises  in  the  Susque- 
hanna Valley— The  pack-horse  days, Pages  191-203 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  CHARCOAL  IRON  IN  THE  JUNIATA 

VALLEY. 

The  Juniata  Iron  Company  organized  in  1767,  but  it  did  not  make  iron— Joseph  and 
Benjamin  Jacobs— Bedford  Furnace,  at  Orbisonia,  in  Huntingdon  county,  built  in 
1788,  the  first  iron  enterprise  in  the  Juniata  Valley— Followed  by  Bedford  Forge  at 
the  same  place  in  1791— Centre  Furnace,  in  Centre  county,  the  second  in  the  Juniata 
Valley,  built  in  1791  by  Col.  John  Patton  and  Col.  Samuel  Miles,  both  Revolutionary 
officers— Other  early  iron  enterprises  in  Centre  county— Roland  Curtin— Hardman  Phil- 
ips erects  a  forge  and  screw  factory  at  Philipsburg,  in  Centre  county,  in  1817— Bernard 
Lauth— Barree  Forge,  on  the  Juniata,  and  Huntingdon  Furnace,  on  Warrior's  Mark 
run,  built  in  1794  and  1796— The  Shoenbergers,  Judge  Gloninger,  George  Anshutz,  and 
other  early  ironmasters  in  Huntingdon  county  and  in  the  present  county  of  Blair— 
The  Royers,  Elias  Baker,  and  Roland  Diller— Martin  Bell— Early  iron  enterprises  in 
Bedford  and  Fulton  counties— Also  in  Mifflin  and  Juniata  counties— Freedom  Forge, 
in  Mifflin  county,  built  before  1795 — Hope  Furnace,  in  the  same  county,  built  by  Gen- 
eral William  Lewis  in  1798,  who  also  built  Moiint  Vernon  Forge,  in  Perry  county,  in 
1804 — Other  early  iron  works  in  Perry  county — Cemented  steel  made  at  Caledonia, 
near  Bedford,  before  1800  by  William  McDermett,  whose  daughter  Josephine  married 
David  R.  Porter,  an  ironmaster  on  Spruce  creek,  Huntingdon  county,  who  afterwards 
became  Governor  of  Pennsylvania— Henry  S.  Spang,  John  Lyon,  Anthony  Shorb,  An- 
drew Gregg,  George  Schmucker,  and  General  James  Irvin  early  Juniata  ironmasters— 
Juniata  iron  in  high  repute, Pages  204-212 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

THE  EARLY  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  WESTERN  PENN- 
SYLVANIA. 

First  mention  in  1780  of  iron  ore  in  Western  Pennsylvania— John  Hayden— The  Alliance 
Iron  Works,  on  Jacob's  creek,  in  Fayette  county,  built  by  WiUiam  Turnbull,  Peter 
Marmie,  and  Col.  John  Holker  in  1789  and  1790,  and  consisting  of  a  furnace  and  a 
forge,  the  first  iron  enterprise  west  of  the  Alleghenies— The  Alliance  Furnace,  which 
was  put  in  blast  on  November  1, 1790,  followed  closely  by  Union  Furnace,  on  Dunbar 
creek,  in  Fayette  county,  built  by  Isaac  Meason  in  1790,  and  put  in  blast  in  March, 
1791— Other  early  iron  enterprises  in  Fayette  county— Jeremiah  Pears— The  enterprises 
of  John  Hayden— The  Oliphants— John  Gibson— The  Brownsville  Steel  Factory,  owned 
by  Truman  &  Co.,  built  before  1811— Jacob  Bowman's  Nail  Factory,  at  Brownsville, 


X  CONTENTS. 

built  about  1795— The  Plumsock  Rolling  Mill,  in  Fayette  county,  the  first  in  the 
United  States  to  roll  bar  iron  and  use  puddling  furnaces— Isaac  Meason  and  his  son, 
Col.  Isaac  Meason — An  early  iron  enterprise  in  Greene  county — Early  iron  enterprises 
in  Westmoreland  county— General  Arthur  St.  Clair  and  Bishop  John  Henry  Hopkins- 
Early  iron  enterprises  in  Somerset,  Cambria,  and  Indiana  counties — George  S.  King — 
The  Cambria  Iron  Works  commenced  in  1853— Early  iron  enterprises  in  Beaver,  Mer- 
cer, and  Lawrence  counties — The  Crawfords — Early  iron  enterprises  in  other  western 
and  northwestern  counties— The  Great  Western  Iron  Works, Pages  213-224 

CHAPTER  XX. 

EAELY  IRON  ENTERPRISES  IN  ALLEGHENY  COUNTY,  PENN- 
SYLVANIA. 

Beginning  of  the  iron  industry  at  Pittsburgh  about  1792,  when  George  Anshutz  built  a 
small  blast  furnace  at  Shady  Side — Proofs  of  the  erection  of  this  furnace,  which  was 
abandoned  in  1794— The  first  iron  foundry  at  Pittsburgh  built  by  Joseph  McClurg 
about  1805 — The  first  nail  factories  in  Pittsburgh,  Porter's,  Sturgeon's,  and  Stewart's, 
in  operation  in  1807,  their  united  capacity  being  "about  40  tons  of  nails  yearly"— 
In  1810  "the  manufacture  of  ironmongery"  at  Pittsburgh  had  "increased  beyond  all 
calculation  "—The  first  rolling  mill  at  Pittsburgh  built  by  Christopher  Cowan  in  1811— 
Followed  in  1819  by  the  Union  Rolling  Mill,  on  the  Monongahela,  which  had  four 
puddling  furnaces,  the  first  in  Pittsburgh— Other  early  rolling  mills  in  Pittsburgh— 
The  first  rolling  mill  in  Allegheny  City— Clinton  Furnace,  in  Pittsburgh,  built  by 
Graff,  Bennett  &  Co.  in  1859,  the  first  successful  furnace  in  Allegheny  county — Statis- 
tics of  the  iron  and  steel  industries  of  Pennsylvania, Pages  225-232 

CHAPTER  XXI. 
THE  EARLY  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  DELAWARE. 

The  Swedes  and  the  Dutch  on  the  Delaware  did  not  make  iron— Iron  Hill,  in  Pencader 
hundred,  New  Castle  county,  Delaware,  discovered  and  so  named  as  early  as  1661— 
The  Colonial  Records  of  Pennsylvania  mention  its  existence  in  1684 — An  account  by 
Emanuel  Swedenborg  of  early  iron  enterprises  in  New  Castle  county  operated  by 
Sir  William  Keith  and  others — Abbington  Furnace — John  Ball's  bloomary  forge — Early 
iron  enterprises  in  Sussex  county— Millsborough  Furnace  probably  the  last  furnace 
operated  in  the  State— Rolling  mills  at  Wilmington  and  in  its  vicinity, .  Pages  233-239 

CHAPTER  XXII. 
EARLY  IRON  ENTERPRISES  IN  MARYLAND.  * 

The  first  iron  enterprise  in  Maryland  was  a  bloomary  forge,  erected  at  the  head  of  Ches- 
apeake Bay,  in  Cecil  county,  a  short  time  before  1716— The  iron  enterprises  of  Ste- 
phen Onion  &  Co.  and  Joseph  Farmer  at  North  East  and  its  vicinity — Merged  in  the 
Principio  Company,  an  English  corporation— This  company  built  Principio  Furnace, 
the  first  furnace  in  Maryland,  in  1723  and  1724,  and  a  forge  at  Principio  in  the  same 
years— Both  probably  at  work  in  1725— John  England  superintended  their  erection  and 
their  operations  for  many  years— The  Principio  Company,  through  Mr.  England, 
builds  a  furnace  on  the  lands  of  Captain  Augustine  Washington,  in  Virginia,  in  1725 
and  1726— Further  history  of  the  Principio  Company,  which  was  for  many  years  the 
leading  iron  company  in  America,  and  was  active  until  the  Revolution— "A  certain 
Mr.  Washington  "—George  P.  Whitaker— The  Ridgely  family— The  Dorseys— The  Snow- 
dens— Early  iron  enterprises  in  Queen  Anne,  Frederick,  and  Washington  counties— 
The  Johnsons— The  iron  industry  of  Maryland  greatly  extended  before  the  Revo- 
lution and  also  afterwards— The  Avalon  Iron  Works  "built  by  the  Dorseys"  about 
1795— Development  of  the  manufacture  of  coke  pig  iron  in  Western  Maryland  in 
1837  and  immediately  succeeding  years— The  first  heavy  iron  rails  in  the  United 
States  made  at  Mount  Savage,  in  Western  Maryland,  in  1844— A  bog-ore  furnace  on 
the  Eastern  Shore  of  Maryland  in  1830— A  furnace  at  Georgetown,  D.  C.,  built  in  1849— 
Government  iron  works  at  Washington, Pages  240-257 


CONTENTS.  xj 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 
THE  IEON  INDUSTRY  ESTABLISHED  IN  VIRGINIA. 

Revival  of  the  iron  industry  in  Virginia  about  1715  by  Governor  Spotswood  and  a  colony 
of  Palatinates— The  first  furnace  in  Virginia  built  at  Fredericksville,  in  Spottsylvania 
county,  near  the  North  Anna  river— The  next  furnace  in  Virginia  built  in  Orange 
county,  on  the  south  side  of  the  Rapidan— An  air  furnace  at  Massaponax,  five  miles 
below  Fredericksburg,  on  the  Rappahannock— Accokeek  Furnace— All  these  enterprises 
described  by  Col.  William  Byrd,  the  second,  in  1732— Mr.  W.  H.  Adams  fixes  the  exact 
location  of  the  first  three  of  these  enterprises— The  connection  of  the  Washington 
family  with  the  iron  industry  of  Virginia  and  Maryland— Extension  of  the  iron  in- 
dustry of  Virginia  into  the  Valley  of  Virginia— Zane's  Furnace  and  Forge,  on  Cedar 
creek,  in  Frederick  county,  were  "built  before  any  iron  works  in  this  region"— Fol- 
lowed by  Pine  Forge,  in  Shenandoah  county— Henry  Miller's  furnace  on  Mossy  creek, 
Augusta  county,  built  about  1775— Other  early  iron  works  in  the  Valley  of  Virginia  and 
in  Southwestern  Virginia— Jefferson's  account  of  the  iron  industry  of  Virginia  in  1781 
and  1782— Ross's  celebrated  iron  works— Household  industries  in  Virginia  about  1790— 
Great  expansion  of  the  charcoal  iron  industry  of  Virginia— Many  furnaces  and  forges 
enumerated  by  Lesley  in  1856 — The  first  rolling  mill  in  Virginia  built  on  Cheat  river 
about  1812  by  Jackson  &  Updegraff—  Wheeling  a  prominent  iron  centre  before  the 
civil  war— Its  first  rolling  mill  built  by  Dr.  Peter  Shoenberger  and  David  Agnew  in 
1832— The  Tredegar  Iron  Company  at  Richmond— Statistics  of  the  iron  and  steel  in- 
dustries of  Virginia  and  West  Virginia Pages  258-271 

CHAPTER  XXIV. 
THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  NORTH  CAROLINA. 

Iron  made  in  "Carolina"  as  early  as  1728  and  exported  to  England— Virginia  and  Caro- 
lina hoes  sold  in  New  York  before  the  Revolution— Iron  enterprises  on  tributaries  of 
the  Cape  Fear,  Yadkin,  and  Dan  rivers  before  the  Revolution— That  event  stimulated 
the  establishment  of  other  iron  enterprises  in  Guilford,  Cleveland,  and  other  coun- 
ties—Before 1800  there  were  many  iron  enterprises  in  Lincoln,  Stokes,  and  Surry 
counties— After  1800  the  iron  industry  was  still  further  extended  in  Lincoln  county, 
which  had  in  1810  six  bloomaries,  two  rolling  and  slitting  mills,  and  two  naileries- 
It  also  became  a  prominent  industry  in  Burke  and  Surry  counties— Extended  into 
many  counties  before  the  civil  war— Bloomaries  and  the  water-blast  in  general  use— 
The  iron  industry  of  North  Carolina  now  almost  extinct, Pages  272-275 

CHAPTER  XXV. 
THE  MANUFACTURE   OF  IRON  IN   SOUTH  CAROLINA. 

The  first  iron  enterprise  in  South  Carolina  established  in  1773  by  Mr.  Buffington  in  the 
northwestern  part  of  the  State— Followed  by  other  iron  enterprises  after  the  Revolu- 
tion—The Era  and  Etna  furnaces  and  forges  in  York  county— The  water-blast  in  use 
in  this  State— Nine  bloomaries  and  other  iron  enterprises  in  South  Carolina  in  1810— 
A  rolling  mill  for  making  sheet  iron  in  this  State  about  1815— In  1840  there  were  four 
furnaces  and  a  number  of  bloomaries,  rolling  mills,  and  other  iron  enterprises— In 
1891  there  was  no  iron  or  steel  enterprise  in  South  Carolina, Pages  276-278 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 
THE  EARLY  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  GEORGIA. 

Georgia  has  no  colonial  iron  history— The  first  iron  enterprises  in  this  State  established 
probably  after  1790,  and  near  the  Atlantic  Coast^-In  1810  there  was  a  bloomary  ii 
Warren  county,  a  forge  in  Elbert  county,  and  a  nailery  in  Chatham  county—] 
and  Sequee  bloomaries,  in  Habersham  county,  built  as  early  as  1830  and  probably  a 
an  earlier  day— Other  bloomaries  established  after  1830  in  Bartow,  Union,  Murray,  Walk- 
er, and  Dade  counties,  and  abandoned  before  1856,  but  other  bloomaries  were  then  ii 
operation— Sequee  Furnace,  in  Habersham  county,  built  before  1832,  probably  the  first 


Xll  CONTENTS. 

furnace  in  the  State— Etowah  Furnace,  in  Bartow  county ;  Allatoona,  Union,  Lewis, 
and  Cartersville  furnaces  in  Cass  county ;  and  Clear  Creek  Furnace,  in  Walker  county 
—Later  charcoal  furnaces— Only  six  furnaces  in  1891,  two  of  which  used  coke— The 
first  rolling  mill  in  Georgia  was  probably  Etowah,  in  Cass  county,  built  about  1849— 
In  1891  there  was  only  one  rolling  mill  in  the  State— Rising  Fawn  Furnace  the  first 
furnace  in  the  United  States  to  use  the  Whitwell  hot-blast  stove— Description  of  the 
various  Etowah  iron  enterprises  as  they  existed  about  1859— The  iron  industry  of 
Georgia  not  now  prominent, Pages  279-281 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 
THE  EARLY  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  KENTUCKY. 

Bourbon  Furnace,  often  called  Slate  Furnace,  the  first  iron  enterprise  in  Kentucky  whose 
history  has  been  preserved,  built  in  1791,  on  Slate  creek,  in  Bath  county — Complete 
history  of  this  furnace  by  V.  B.  Young,  Esq.,  of  Owingsville,  Kentucky— Sketch  of 
its  projectors  and  builders— In  1810  there  were  four  furnaces  and  three  forges  in  Ken- 
tucky—First furnaces  in  the  Hanging  Rock  region  of  Kentucky  built  about  1817  and 
1818— Names  of  the  Hanging  Rock  pioneers— Extension  of  the  iron  industry  in  the 
Hanging  Rock  region— The  first  rolling  mill  in  Kentucky  appears  to  have  been  built 
at  Covington  in  1829— Present  condition  of  the  Kentucky  iron  industry— Many  new 
iron  and  steel  enterprises, Pages  282-287 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 
THE  EARLY  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  TENNESSEE. 

A  bloomary  at  Embreeville,  in  Washington  county,  built  in  1790,  the  first  iron  enterprise 
in  Tennessee — Other  early  enterprises  in  the  eastern  part  of  Tennessee— Ross's  Iron 
Works,  on  the  Holston  river,  in  Sullivan  county,  built  before  1800— Other  early  iron 
enterprises  in  Tennessee  built  before  and  soon  after  1800— Cumberland  Furnace,  in 
Dickson  county,  built  by  James  Robinson  in  1792— Yellow  Creek  Furnace,  in  Mont- 
gomery county,  built  in  1802— The  iron  industry  of  Tennessee  greatly  extended— De- 
scription of  the  iron  industry  of  this  State  in  1856  by  Lesley— Chattanooga  the  pres- 
ent iron  centre  of  Tennessee — Account  of  its  early  iron  enterprises — Bluff  Furnace — 
James  Henderson— The  two  Rockwood  furnaces— The  Roane  Iron  Company— Lewis 
Scofield— S.  B.  Lowe— The  iron  industries  of  Knoxville— Present  condition  of  the 
Tennessee  iron  industry, Pages  288-292 

CHAPTER  XXIX. 

THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  ALABAMA.  * 

The  first  furnace  in  Alabama  probably  built  about  1818  west  of  Russellville,  in  Frank- 
lin county— Abandoned  in  1827— Early  furnaces  in  Calhoun,  Cherokee,  and  Shelby 
counties— Horace  Ware— Early  bloomaries  in  Shelby,  Bibb,  Talladega,  and  Calhoun 
counties — Many  of  them  blown  with  the  trompe,  or  water-blast — Iron  enterprises  in  Ala- 
bama during  the  civil  war— Furnaces  and  rolling  mills  built  at  Brierfield  and  Shelby- 
Discovery  of  coal  in  Alabama — The  first  iron  enterprises  at  Birmingham  and  its  vi- 
cinity—Later iron  and  steel  enterprises  in  Alabama— Statistics  of  the  production  of 
pig  iron  in  Alabama  and  other  Southern  States  from  1880  to  1890— Wonderful  progress 
in  ten  years, Pages  293-296 

CHAPTER  XXX. 

PRIMITIVE  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE  SOUTHERN  IRON 
INDUSTRY. 

The  wonderful  development  of  the  iron  industry  of  Western  North  Carolina  and  East 
Tennessee  many  years  ago  an  interesting  fact-Furnaces  blown  with  one  tuyere  and 
wooden  tubs— "  Thundergust  forges"— The  trompe  in  general  use— Bar  iron  used  as  a 
medium  of  exchange — Never  many  bloomaries  in  Virginia — Old  methods  of  making 
iron  have  passed  away  in  the  South, Pages  297-300 


CONTENTS.  Xlll 

CHAPTER  XXXI. 

THE  EARLY  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  OHIO. 

Hopewell  Furnace,  in  Mahoning  county,  the  first  iron  enterprise  in  Ohio,  commenced  in 
1803  and  finished  in  1804  by  Daniel  Eaton— Montgomery  Furnace,  built  in  1806,  also 
in  Mahoning  county,  by  Robert  Montgomery  and  John  Struthers,  the  second  iron 
enterprise  in  the  State— The  first  hammered  bars  in  Ohio  made  at  a  forge  at  Niles- 
town,  Trumbull  county,  in  1809,  by  James  Heaton,  who  also  built  a  furnace  at  Niles- 
town  011  Mosquito  creek  about  1812— The  iron  industry  of  Ohio  extended  to  the  shore 
of  Lake  Erie  about  1825 — Rebecca  Furnace,  at  New  Lisbon,  Columbiana  county,  built 
in  1807  or  1808  by  Gideon  Hughes— Licking  Furnace  and  Forge,  near  Zanesville,  built 
by  Moses  Dillon  about  1808— Early  iron  enterprises  in  Licking  and  Tuscarawas  coun- 
ties— The  Zoar  Community — Early  iron  enterprises  in  Adams  county — Beginning  of 
the  manufacture  of  iron  in  the  Hanging  Rock  region  of  Ohio— The  Hanging  Rock 
pioneers,  John  Campbell,  Thomas  W.  Means,  and  others— Description  by  Mr.  John 
Birkiiibine  of  Olive  Furnace,  a  curious  structure— The  good  quality  of  Hanging  Rock 
charcoal  pig  iron— The  old  charcoal  furnace  of  the  Hecla  Iron  and  Mining  Com- 
pany—Early forges  on  the  Ohio  river— The  first  rolling  mill  at  Cincinnati— Crucible 
steel  works  at  Cincinnati  built  in  1832— Introduction  of  raw  bituminous  coal  in  the 
blast  furnaces  of  the  Mahoning  Valley,  first  at  Lowell,  in  1846,  by  Wilkeson,  Wilkes  & 
Co.— Introduction  of  Lake  Superior  ores  in  Ohio  blast  furnaces— First  shipments  of 
Brier  Hill  coal  to  Cleveland  made  by  David  Tod  in  1840— Mill  Creek  Furnace,  the 
first  iron  enterprise  at  Youngstown,  built  about  1835— Beginning  of  the  iron  industry 
at  Cleveland— Henry  Chisholm, Pages  301-313 

CHAPTER  XXXII. 
EARLY  IRON  ENTERPRISES  IN  INDIANA. 

A  "nailery"  in  Indiana  Territory  as  early  as  1810— In  1840  the  census  mentions  a  furnace 
in  Jefferson  county,  one  in  Parke,  one  in  Vigo,  one  in  Vermillion,  and  three  in 
Wayne  county— A  bloomary  forge  in  Fulton  county  also  mentioned— An  early  fur- 
nace in  Monroe  county— An  early  forge  in  Marshall  county  built  about  1845  by 
Charles  Crocker  and  a  partner— Mishawaka  Forge,  in  St.  Joseph  county— Other  char- 
coal iron  enterprises  in  Indiana— Development  of  the  block-coal  district  of  Indiana 
and  the  erection  of  furnaces  to  use  this  coal— The  first  rolling  mill  in  Indiana  built 
by  R.  A.  Douglas,  at  Indianapolis,  in  1857— Present  condition  of  the  iron  and  steel  in- 
dustries of  Indiana, Pages  314-316 

CHAPTER  XXXIII. 
EARLY  IRON  ENTERPRISES  IN  ILLINOIS. 

Illinois  Furnace,  at  Elizabethtown,  in  Hardin  county,  built  in  1839,  the  first  iron  enter- 
prise in  Illinois  for  the  manufacture  of  iron  of  any  kind— No  furnaces  in  opera- 
tion in  Illinois  from  1860  to  1868— Development  of  the  Big  Muddy  coal  fields  and  the 
erection  of  furnaces  at  Grand  Tower  and  elsewhere  in  Southwestern  Illinois— Be- 
ginning of  the  iron  industry  at  Chicago  in  1857,  when  Captain  E.  B.  Ward  and  others 
built  the  Chicago  Rolling  Mill— The  first  furnaces  in  Chicago  built  in  1868— Present 
condition  of  the  iron  and  steel  industries  of  Illinois Pages  317-319 

CHAPTER  XXXIV. 
EARLY  IRON  ENTERPRISES  IN  MICHIGAN. 

Charcoal  furnaces  in  Michigan  before  1840— From  1840  to  1850  the  iron  industry  of  Mich- 
igan made  no  progress  and  possibly  declined— From  1850  to  1860  three  bog-ore  fur- 
naces were  built  in  the  southern  part  of  the  State — The  development  of  the  Lake  Su- 
perior iron-ore  region  commenced  with  the  first  discovery  by  white  men  of  the  iron 
ore  of  this  region  in  1844,  near  the  eastern  end  of  Teal  Lake,  by  William  A.  Burt— 
In  1845  the  Jackson  Mining  Company  was  organized  at  Jackson,  Michigan,  and  in 
1847  it  commenced  the  erection  of  a  forge  on  Carp  river  which  was  finished  in  1848, 


XIV  CONTENTS. 

and  in  that  year  the  first  iron  made  in  the  Lake  Superior  region  was  manufactured  by 
Ariel  N.  Barney — History  of  subsequent  iron  manufacturing  enterprises  in  the  Lake 
Superior  region  and  of  the  development  of  the  iron  ores  of  Lake  Superior— The  first 
use  of  Lake  Superior  iron  ore  in  a  blast  furnace  occurred  in  Mercer  county,  Pennsyl- 
vania, in  1853— History  of  the  Sharon  Iron  Company  which  used  this  ore— Statistics  of 
the  production  of  Lake  Superior  iron  ore — Captain  E.  B.  Ward,  ....  Pages  320-328 

CHAPTER  XXXV. 
THE  EARLY  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  WISCONSIN. 

Prior  to  1859  there  were  three  charcoal  furnaces  in  Wisconsin — No  others  were  built 
until  1865,  when  a  charcoal  furnace  at  Iron  Ridge,  in  Dodge  county,  was  built  by 
the  Wisconsin  Iron  Company,  which  was  soon  followed  by  several  other  furnaces — 
Wisconsin  had  no  rolling  mill  until  1868,  when  its  first  mill  was  built  at  Milwaukee 
by  the  Milwaukee  Iron  Company — Present  condition  of  the  iron  and  steel  industries 
of  Wisconsin, Pages  329-331 

CHAPTER  XXXVI. 
EARLY  IRON  ENTERPRISES  IN  MISSOURI. 

Ashebran's  Furnace,  on  Stout's  creek,  about  two  miles  east  of  Ironton,  in  Iron  county, 
built  about  1815,  probably  the  first  iron  enterprise  in  Missouri — Followed  in  1819  or 
1820  by  a  bloomary  forge  on  Thicketty  creek,  in  Crawford  county,  built  by  William 
Harrison  and  Josiah  Reeves — Blooms  hammered  at  this  forge  under  a  spring-pole 
hammer— Springfield  Furnace,  in  Washington  county,  built  in  1823  or  1824  by  Ever- 
sol,  Perry  &  Ruggles,  the  next  iron  enterprise  in  Missouri— Maramec  Furnace,  in 
Phelps  county,  finished  in  1829— Development  of  the  iron-ore  deposits  of  Iron 
Mountain  and  Pilot  Knob  in  1836  and  subsequent  years— Furnaces  built  in  this  re- 
gion—Commencement of  the  iron  industry  of  St.  Louis  in  1850— Further  history  and 
present  condition  of  the  iron  and  steel  industries  of  Missouri,  ....  Pages  332-337 

CHAPTER  XXXVII. 
THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  TEXAS. 

Texas  had  one  blast  furnace  before  the  civil  war,  located  in  Cass  county— Erection  of 
other  furnaces  and  of  several  bloomaries  in  Texas  during  the  war— Charcoal  furnaces 
built  in  Texas  after  the  war  and  in  recent  years— The  first  rolling  mills  in  this  State 
built  at  Houston  and  at  Fort  Worth— A  promising  iron  future  for  Texas,  Pages  338-340 

CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 
THE   MANUFACTURE   OF   IRON   IN   VARIOUS  WESTERN   STATES. 

The  first  blast  furnace  in  Minnesota  commenced  in  1872  but  not  finished  until  1880— 
Later  iron  enterprises  in  this  State— A  bloomary  built  and  in  operation  in  Lawrence 
county,  Arkansas,  as  early  as  1857— Iron  once  made  in  Carroll  county,  Arkansas,  in 
the  hollow  stumps  of  trees— The  undeveloped  iron  resources  of  Arkansas— Early  iron 
enterprises  in  Kansas,  Iowa,  and  Nebraska— The  first  iron  enterprise  in  Colorado  was 
a  small  charcoal  furnace  at  Langford,  in  Boulder  county,  which  was  finished  and 
put  in  blast  in  1864— The  first  rolling  mill  in  Colorado  was  removed  in  1877  by  Will- 
iam Faux  from  Danville,  Pennsylvania,  to  Pueblo,  and  put  in  operation  in  1878,  the 
product  being  re-rolled  rails— Later  iron  and  steel  enterprises  in  Colorado— A  forge  in 
Utah  Territory,  east  of  Salt  Lake  City,  built  as  early  as  1859,  but  the  Mormons  had 
made  iron  many  years  before— Later  but  abortive  iron  enterprises,  .  .  .  Pages  341-345 

CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

THE  IRON  INDUSTRY  ON  THE  PACIFIC  COAST. 

First  furnace  and  rolling  mill  in  California— The  iron  and  steel  enterprises  of  California 
fully  described— The  iron  enterprises  of  Oregon  and  Washington,  .  .  .  Pages  346-347 


CONTENTS.  XV 

CHAPTER  XL. 

THE  FIRST  IRON  WORKS  IN  CANADA. 

Description  of  the  pioneer  iron  works  in  Canada,  located  near  Three  Rivers,  in  Quebec, 
and  known  as  the  Forges  of  St.  Maurice— Commenced  in  1737,  when  a  blast  furnace 
was  built  which  was  in  operation  as  late  as  1883, Pages  348-351 

CHAPTER  XLI. 
THE    MANUFACTURE    OF   IRON    WITH    ANTHRACITE    COAL. 

The  distinctive  charcoal  era  of  the  American  iron  industry  ended  about  1840,  when  both 
anthracite  and  bituminous  coal  began  to  be  used  successfully  in  blast  furnaces — 
More  charcoal  iron  made  in  the  United  States  to-day,  however,  than  in  1840  or  any 
preceding  year — Anthracite  coal  used  experimentally  in  many  American  blast  fur- 
naces between  1815  and  1840,  generally  in  connection  with  charcoal— Dr.  Frederick 
W.  Geissenhainer's  experiments— Granted  a  patent  in  1833  for  the  use  of  anthracite 
coal  in  the  blast  furnace — Builds  Valley  Furnace  in  1836,  and  makes  a  feAV  tons  of 
pig  iron  exclusively  with  anthracite  coal  in  the  fall  of  that  year— George  Crane's  ex- 
periments with  anthracite  coal  in  the  blast  furnace  in  South  Wales  in  the  same 
year— He  successfully  uses  it  in  1837— Visited  in  that  year  by  Solomon  W.  Roberts,  of 
Philadelphia,  upon  whose  advice  the  Lehigh  Crane  Iron  Company  was  organized- 
Mr.  Crane's  patents — Details  of  various  attempts  in  the  United  States  to  make  pig 
iron  with  anthracite  coal  between  1836  and  1839— Pioneer  Furnace,  at  Pottsville— 
William  Lyman— Anthracite  furnaces  in  1840— First  anthracite  furnace  in  the  Lehigh 
Valley  built  in  1839  and  1840  by  David  Thomas  for  the  Lehigh  Crane  Iron  Company— 
Successfully  blown  in  on  July  3,  1840,  and  first  cast  made  on  July  4th— Biographical 
sketch  of  Mr.  Thomas— Rapid  growth  after  1840  of  the  anthracite  pig-iron  industry— 
The  first  use  of  anthracite  coal  in  connection  with  the  manufacture  of  finished  iron 
in  the  United  States  dates  from  1812— First  used  under  boilers  in  1825  and  in  puddling 
in  1827,  at  Phoenixville,  by  Jonah  and  George  Thompson,  Pages  352-365 

CHAPTER  XLIL 
THE   MANUFACTURE   OF  IRON  WITH   BITUMINOUS    COAL. 

Remarkable  that  the  use  of  bituminous  coal  in  American  blast  furnaces  should  have  been 
so  long  delayed — Experiments  in  the  use  of  coke  in  blast  furnaces  in  this  country  all 
unsuccessful  until  1835,  when  William  Firmstone  was  successful  in  substituting  coke 
for  charcoal  at  Mary  Ann  Furnace,  in  Huntingdon  county,  Pennsylvania— Sketch  of 
his  life— F.  H.  Oliphant  successful  in  making  coke  pig  iron  at  Fairchance  Furnace, 
in  Fayette  county,  Pennsylvania,  in  1837— Various  unsuccessful  experiments  to  use 
coke  in  blast  furnaces  in  Pennsylvania-rSome  successful  experiments— Henry  C. 
Carey— First  notable  success  in  this  country  in  making  pig  iron  with  coke  accom- 
plished at  Lonaconing  Furnace,  in  Western  Maryland,  in  1839,  followed  in  1840  by 
equal  success  at  two  furnaces  of  the  Mount  Savage  Iron  Company  in  the  same  part 
of  Maryland— Slow  progress  after  1840  in  the  use  of  coke  in  the  blast  furnace— Its  use 
increased  after  1850,  and  very  rapidly  after  1865— First  coke  furnaces  south  of  the 
Potomac— The  use  of  raw  bituminous  coal  in  the  blast  furnace  successfully  inaugu- 
rated in  1845  at  Clay  Furnace,  in  Mercer  county,  Pennsylvania,  by  Himrod  &  Vin- 
cent—This was  a  charcoal  furnace— Mahoning  Furnace,  at  Lowell,  in  Mahoning 
county,  Ohio,  the  first  furnace  built  expressly  to  use  raw  coal— Successfully  blown  in 
in  1846  for  its  owners,  Wilkeson,  Wilkes  &  Co.,  by  John  Crowther— Sketch  of  his 
life— Water  power  in  general  use  in  blowing  furnaces  down  to  1840, .  .  Pages  366-375 

CHAPTER  XLIIL 
STATISTICS  OF  PIG  IRON  PRODUCTION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

The  production  of  anthracite  pig  iron  in  the  United  States  passes  that  of  charcoal  pig 
iron  in  1855— Bituminous  passes  charcoal  in  1869— Bituminous  passes  anthracite  in 
1875— The  production  of  pig  iron  in  the  United  States  in  1890  exceeded  that  of  Great 
Britain  in  1882,  her  year  of  greatest  production, Pages  376-377 


XVI  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   XLIV. 

THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  BLISTER  AND  CRUCIBLE  STEEL  IN  THE 
UNITED  STATES. 

Steel  manufactured  in  a  small  way  in  several  of  the  colonies  both  by  the  cementation 
process  and  "in  the  German  manner"— The  first  steel  in  the  colonies  probably  made 
in  Connecticut  in  1728  by  Samuel  Higley  and  Joseph  Dewey— Steel  made  by  Aaron 
Eliot,  of  Connecticut,  in  1761,  from  bar  iron  which  had  been  made  from  magnetic 
sand— In  1750  Massachusetts  had  one  steel  furnace— First  steel  made  in  New  York  in 
1776  by  Peter  Townsend — New  Jersey  had  one  steel  furnace  in  1750 — Pennsylvania 
had  three  steel  furnaces  in  that  year— Condition  of  the  American  steel  industry  in 
1791,  just  one  hundred  years  ago— Slow  growth  of  the  steel  industry  of  thfc  United 
States— Report  on  the  state  of  the  industry  in  1831  by  John  R.  Coates,  of  Philadel- 
phia—Cast steel  not  then  made  in  the  United  States— From  1831  to  1860  the  steel  in- 
dustry of  this  country  still  continued  to  make  slow  progress — Full  details  of  the 
establishment  at  Cincinnati  in  1832,  by  William  and  John  H.  Garrard,  of  the  first 
successful  crucible  steel  works  in  the  United  States — Analysis  of  the  crucible  steel 
made  at  these  works— Statistics  of  the  steel  industry  of  Pennsylvania  in  1850,  with 
the  names  of  all  the  manufacturers — Pioneers  in  the  manufacture  of  blister  and  cru- 
cible steel  at  Pittsburgh— Hussey,  Wells  &  Co.,  in  1860,  and  Park,  Brother  &  Co.,  in 
1862,  the  first  persons  in  the  United  States  to  meet  with  complete  financial  as  well  as 
mechanical  success  in  the  manufacture  of  crucible  steel  of  the  best  quality — Full 
history  of  the  Adirondack  Steel  Works— James  R.  Thompson— McKelvy  &  Blair— Sta- 
j  tistics  of  the  production  of  crucible  steel  in  the  United  States, Pages  378-394 

CHAPTER  XLV. 
THE  INVENTION  OF  THE  BESSEMER  PROCESS. 

Brief  description  of  the  Bessemer  process— Beginning  of  Sir  Henry  Bessemer's.  experi- 
ments—Patents granted  to  him  in  England  in  185£  and  1856— Robert  F.  Mushet's 
invaluable  assistance  in  perfecting  the  Bessemer  process— Bessemer's  patents  in  the 
United  States  granted  in  1856— William  Kelly's  claim  of  priority  in  1857  conceded  by 
the  Commissioner  of  Patents— Mr.  Kelly's  own  account  of  his  invention  of  the  pneu- 
matic process— His  experiments  with  a  converting  vessel  at  Johnstown  in  1857  and 
1858— Full  account  of  Mr.  Mushet's  application  of  spiegeleisen  to  the  Bessemer  proc- 
ess—The first  Bessemer  steel  rail  ever  laid  down  was  made  by  Mr.  Mushet— Sir 
Henry  Bessemer's  letter  to  Sir  James  Kitson  in  1890— Sir  Henry's  immense  profits 
from  his  invention— Mr.  Mushet's  pathetic  complaint— Mr.  Goran  Fredrik  Gorans- 
son's  account  of  his  part  in  perfecting  the  Bessemer  process— Invention  of  the  basic 
process  by  Sidney  Gilchrist  Thomas,  Percy  C.  Gilchrist,  and  George  J.  Snelus— Also 
by  Jacob  Reese— Experiments  in  the  elimination  of  phosphorus  by  James  Henderson 
and  Colonel  J.  B.  Kunkel— The  Clapp-Grimths  and  Robert-Bessemer  processes— Joseph 
Gilbert  Martien's  experiments— Hon.  Abram  S.  Hewitt's  report  on  Bessemer  steel  at 
the  Paris  Exposition  of  1867— Biographical  sketches  of  Robert  F.  Mushet  and  Sidney 
G.  Thomas Pages  395-408 

CHAPTER  XLVI. 
THE  BESSEMER  PROCESS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

The  Kelly  patents  controlled  by  a  company— Experimental  Bessemer  steel  works  built 
for  this  company  at  Wyandotte,  Michigan,  in  1863  and  1864,  by  William  F.  Durfee— 
First  Bessemer  steel  made  in  the  United  States  by  Mr.  Durfee,  in  September,  1864— 
Bessemer  steel  next  made  by  A.  L.  Holley,  in  February,  1865,  at  experimental  works 
built  at  Troy  in  1864  by  Winslow,  Griswold  &  Holley— Consolidation  of  the  interests  of 
the  owners  of  the  American  patents  of  Bessemer,  Mushet,  and  Kelly— List  of  the 
Bessemer  steel  works  built  in  the  United  States  down  to  1876— First  Bessemer  steel 
rails  made  in  the  United  States  were  rolled  at  the  Chicago  Rolling  Mill  in  May, 
1865— Statistics  of  the  American  and  British  Bessemer  steel  industries  down  to  1890— 
Biographical  sketches  of  deceased  American  Bessemer  steel  pioneers,  .  .  Pages  409-417 


CONTENTS.  XV11 

CHAPTER  XLVII. 
THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  OPEN-HEARTH  STEEL. 

The  open-hearth  process  briefly  described— Its  advantages— Invention  of  the  Siemens  re- 
generative gas  furnace— First  patent  granted  to  Frederick  Siemens  in  1856— Experiments 
by  Dr.  Charles  William  Siemens  in  1861  in  the  manufacture  of  cast  steel  with  regener- 
ative gas  in  an  open-hearth— Experiments  by  Emile  and  Pierre  Martin  in  France  in 
1864 — Their  principal  patent  granted  in  France  in  1865 — Subsequent  operations  of  Dr. 
Siemens  and  the  Martins— Their  different  methods  described— Introduction  of  the 
regenerative  furnace  into  the  United  States— Names  of  the  pioneers  who  first  experi- 
mented in  its  use— First  open-hearth  furnace  in  the  United  States  built  for  Cooper, 
Hewitt  &  Co.,  at  Trenton,  New  Jersey,  in  1868,  by  Frederick  J.  Slade— First  use  of  the 
regenerative  furnace  in  the  United  States  in  the  puddling  of  iron — Various  direct 
processes— The  production  of  basic  steel  in  the  United  States—Statistics  of  its  produc- 
tion—Also of  the  production  of  open-hearth  steel  in  the  United  States  and  in  Great 
Britain  to  the  close  of  1890— Biographical  sketch  of  Dr.  Siemens,  ....  Pages  418-425 

CHAPTER   XLVIII. 
THE  EARLY  HISTORY  OF  IRON  RAILS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

First  railroads  built  in  the  United  States— The  Quincy  and  Mauch  Chunk  railroads— The 
Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad,  commenced  in  1828,  the  first  in  the  United  States  that 
was  built  for  the  conveyance  of  passengers— Put  in  operation  from  Baltimore  to  Elli- 
cott's  Mills  in  1830— Other  early  passenger  railroads  in  the  United  States— Description 
of  the  track  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad— Also  of  the  rails  first  used  on  early 
American  railroads — Strap  rails — The  Birkinshaw  rail — The  Clarence  rail — The  use  of 
strap  rails  continued  for  many  years— Cast-iron  rails  once  made  in  the  United  States- 
Heavy  iron  rails  not  made  in  the  United  States  until  1844— First  American  T  rails 
made  at  Mount  Savage,  Maryland,  in  that  year — The  T  rail  an  American  invention — 
Robert  L.  Stevens  the  inventor— Full  particulars  of  the  invention— The  first  30-foot,  60- 
foot,  and  120-foot  rails  rolled  in  the  United  States— The  first  American  locomotives- 
First  street  and  elevated  railroads  in  the  United  States— Statistics  of  iron  and  steel 
rails  in  the  United  States— Henry  Thomas  Weld, Pages  426-441 

CHAPTER  XLIX. 

IRON  SHIPBUILDING  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

Henry  Hall's  account  of  the  first  iron  steamboats  and  steamships  in  the  United  States- 
Captain  John  Ericsson's  iron  vessels— Other  iron  vessels— Notable  Transatlantic  iron 
steamships  built  in  the  United  States— W.  Cramp  &  Sons— John  Roach  &  Son— Full 
and  correct  account  of  the  construction  and  career  of  the  iron-turreted  .Monitor— Wins- 
low  &  Griswold,  iron  manufacturers,  took  all  the  risks  if  it  should  prove  to  be  a 
failure— Theodore  R.  Timby— Statistics  of  iron  and  steel  shipbuilding  in  the  United 
States  down  to  1891— Biographical  sketch  of  John  Ericsson, Pages  442-447 

CHAPTER  L. 

THE  HISTORY  OF  CUT  AND  WIRE  NAILS. 

Cut  nails  first  made  in  the  United  States— Shubal  Wilder's  account  of  early  cut-nail 
machines— Wire  nails  first  made  in  the  United  States  at  New  York  in  1851  or  1852 
by  William  Hassall— The  American  Wire  Nail  Company,  at  Covington,  .Kentucky,  the 
pioneer  in  this  country  in  the  manufacture  of  the  standard  wire  nail— Statistics  of 
the  production  of  cut  nails  and  wire  nails  in  the  United  States,  ....  Pages  448-451 

CHAPTER  LI. 
IMPROVEMENTS  IN  AMERICAN   BLAST  FURNACE   PRACTICE. 

Interesting  information  concerning  English  and  colonial  pig  iron  in  1730— First  applica- 
tion of  the  hot-blast  in  the  United  States  made  by  William  Henry  in  1834  at  Oxford 


XV111  CONTENTS. 

Furnace,  New  Jersey— Improvements  in  the  hot-blast  by  Samuel  Thomas  and  John 
Player— First  fire-brick  hot-blast  stoves  in  the  United  States— Utilization  of  blast-fur- 
nace gases— David  Thomas  introduces  powerful  blowing  engines— Good  work  by  one 
of  the  Cooper  furnaces  at  Phillipsburg,  New  Jersey,  in  1850— Also  by  one  of  the  Isa- 
bella furnaces  near  Pittsburgh— Also  by  Furnace  F  of  the  Edgar  Thomson  works  near 
Pittsburgh— Also  by  Hinkle  (charcoal)  Furnace  at  Ashland,  Wisconsin— First  coke 
furnace  "  banked  up  "  in  the  United  States— Biographical  sketches  of  Achilles  Chris- 
tian Wilhelm  von  Faber  du  Faur  and  Christian  Edward  Detmold,  .  .  .  Pages  452-458 

CHAPTER  LII.  , 

THE   MANUFACTURE    OF   TINPLATES    IN   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

First  tinplates  made  in  the  United  States— Statistics  of  importations  of  tinplates  into  the 
United  States  from  1871  to  1890, Page  459 

CHAPTER  LIIL 

MISCELLANEOUS    FACTS    RELATING    TO    THE    AMERICAN   IRON 
AND   STEEL  INDUSTRIES. 

Natural  gas  first  used  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  in  1874— First  bar  iron  rolled  in  New 
England— The  Phoenix  wrought-iron  column— John  Griffen's  valuable  contribution  to 
rolling-mill  economy  in  1846— Good  work  by  the  Reading  Steam  Forge  in  1856— De- 
scription of  Park,  Brother  &  Co.'s  steam  hammer,  built  in  1881— Description  of  the 
steam  hammer  of  the  Bethlehem  Iron  Company,  completed  in  1891— Slitting  mills  in 
the  United  States  in  1884— The  first  wire  suspension  bridge  in  the  United  States- 
First  wire  fence  in  the  United  States— Biographical  sketches, Pages  460-466 

CHAPTER  LIV. 
EARLY  DISCOVERIES  OF  COAL  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

First  mention  of  coal  in  the  United  States  by  Father  Hennepin,  who  found  it  on  the 
Illinois  river  in  1679— Discovered  in  Virginia  in  1701— Discovered  in  Western  Pennsyl- 
vania—Mines opened  at  Pittsburgh— In  Clearfield  county,  Pennsylvania— Virginia 
mines  the  first  worked  in  America— First  shipments  of  GtrmTTerland  coal— Discovered 
west  of  the  Mississippi  by  Lewis  and  Clarke  in  1804— Anthracite  coal  discovered  in 
the  Wyoming  Valley  in  1766— Discovered  at  Carbondale  and  other  places  in  Eastern 
Pennsylvania— Early  experiments  in  its  use— Incorporation  of  the  Lehigh  Coal  and  Nav- 
igation Company— First  use  of  anthracite  coal  in  smiths'  forges  and  in  dwelling  houses 
—Coal  in  Alabama  first  noticed  in  1834— Beginning  of  the  manufacture  of  Connells- 
ville  coke— Statistics  of  the  production  of  coal  in  the  United  States,  .  .  Pages  467-478 

CHAPTER  LV. 

BRITISH   EFFORTS   TO   PREVENT   THE   DEVELOPMENT   OF   THE 
AMERICAN  IRON  INDUSTRY. 

Full  extracts  from  various  English  and  American  writers  and  from  British  statutes  to 
show  that  it  was  long  the  settled  policy  of  the  British  Government  to  prevent  the 
development  of  any  manufacturing  industries  in  the  American  colonies  except  those 
which  produced  raw  materials  suitable  for  further  manufacture  in  Great  Britain— The 
colonial  iron  industry  an  especial  object  of  unfriendly  legislation,  .  .  .  Pages  479-493 

CHAPTER  LVI. 

THE  AMERICAN  IRON  INDUSTRY  LONG  DEPRESSED  BY  FOREIGN 

COMPETITION. 

Depression  in  the  American  iron  industry  after  the  Revolution  caused  partly  by  low 
duties  on  competing  foreign  products— Pennsylvania  opposed  to  protecting  her  iron 
industry  in  1785— Dr.  Schoepf's  account  of  the  American  iron  industry  in  1788— 
Tariff  legislation  did  not  help  the  American  iron  industry  until  1812,  .  .  Pages  494-497 


/ 


CONTENTS.  XIX 

CHAPTER  LVII. 

M  /  IMPEDIMENTS  TO  THE   CHEAP   PRODUCTION   OF   IRON  AND 
STEEL  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

Wages  in  the  iron  and  steel  industries  of  the  United  States  higher  than  in  Europe  and 
Tjbe^cost  of  transportation  of  raw  materials  greater  because  the  distances  they  must 
be  transpofted^rc  longer— English  testimony  on  these  subjects Pages  498-501 

CHAPTER  LVIJI. 

WASHINGTON   AND  LINCOLN  THE   DESCENDANTS  OF  COLONIAL 

IRONMASTERS. 

The  father  of  George  Washington  a  manufacturer  of  pig  iron  at  Accokeek  Furnace,  in 
Virginia— The  two  half-brothers  of  George  Washington  and  other  relatives  were  also 
pig-iron  manufacturers— Abraham  Lincoln  descended  from  Mordecai  Lincoln,  a  na- 
tive of  Hingham,  Plymouth  county,  Massachusetts,  who  was  one  of  the  founders  of 
the  Bound  Brook  Iron  Works,  in  Plymouth  county,  in  1703— Genealogy  of  the  Lincoln 
family  from  Mordecai  Lincoln  to  Abraham  Lincoln, Pages  502-508 

CHAPTER  LIX. 

PRODUCTION  AND  PRICES  OF  IRON  AND  STEEL  IN  THE  UNITED 

STATES. 

Statistics  of  the  production  of  iron  and  steel  in  the  United  States  from  1810  to  1890— 
Tables  of  prices  of  iron  and  steel  in  the  United  States  from  1794  to  1890— Production 
of  iron  ore  in  the  United  States  in  1880  and  1889 Pages  509-516 

CHAPTER  LX. 

IMPORTS  AND  EXPORTS  OF  IRON  AND  STEEL  BY  THE  UNITED 

STATES. 

Colonial  exports  of  pig  iron  and  bar  iron  from  1717  to  1776— Values  of  the  imports  and 
exports  of  iron  and  steel  by  the  United  States  from  1871  to  1890,  ....  Pages  517-518 

CHAPTER  LXI. 

MISCELLANEOUS   STATISTICS   OF   IRON,   STEEL,  IRON   ORE,  AND 

COAL. 

,  Production  of  pig  iron  and  coal  by  Great  Britain  and  Germany  for  a  long  series  of  years 
down  to  the  close  of  1890— The  world's  production  of  basic  steel  to  the  close  of  1890— 
The  world's  production  of  pig  iron,  steel,  iron  ore,  and  coal  by  countries  in  1890  and 
other  recent  years— Percentage  of  production  by  the  United  States,  .  .  .  Pages  519-524 

CHAPTER  LXII. 

IMPORTANT  USES  OF  IRON  AND  STEEL  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

The  people  of  the  United  States  are  the  largest  per  capita  consumers  of  iron  and  steel  in 
the  world— Details  of  the  more  important  uses  of  iron  and  steel,  .  .  .  Pages  525-531 

CHAPTER  LXIII. 
CONCLUSION. 

General  review  of  the  progress  of  the  world's  iron  and  steel  industries  in  the  last  hun- 
dred years— Also  of  the  great  progress  in  these  industries  made  by  the  United  States 
in  the  last  thirty  years— Comparison  of  the  present  development  of  these  industries 
in  the  United  States  with  their  condition  at  various  periods  during  the  last  hundred 
years Pages 

PERSONAL  INDEX. 

Names  of  the  iron  and  steel  pioneers  and  other  iron  and  steel  manufacturers,  Pages  541-554 


THE  smith  also  sitting  by  the  anvil,  and  considering  the  iron 
work,  the  vapour  of  the  fire  wasteth  his  flesh,  and  he  fighteth  with 
the  heat  of  the  furnace :  the  noise  of  the  hammer  and  the  anvil  is 
ever  in  his  ears,  and  his  eyes  look  still  upon  the  pattern  of  the 
thing  that  he  maketh ;  he  setteth  his  mind  to  finish  his  work,  and 
watcheth  to  polish  it  perfectly. — Ecclesiasticus,  38,  28. 


THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON 
IS  ALL  AGES, 


CHAPTER   I. 
THE    EARLIEST   USE    OF    IRON. 

THE  use  of  iron  can  be  traced  to  the  earliest  ages  of 
antiquity.  Copper  and  bronze,  or  brass,  may  have  been  used 
at  as  early  a  period  as  iron,  and  for  many  centuries  after 
their  use  began  they  undoubtedly  "superseded  iron  to  a  large 
extent,  but  the  common  theory  that  there  was  a  copper  or  a 
bronze  age  before  iron  was  either  known  or  used  is  discred- 
ited by  Old  Testament  history,  by  the  earlier  as  well  as  the 
later  literature  of  the  ancient  Greeks,  and  by  the  discoveries 
of  modern  antiquarians. 

In  his  inaugural  address  as  President  of  the  Iron  and 
Steel  Institute,  delivered  in  May,  1885,  Dr.  John  Percy,  the 
eminent  English  metallurgist,  briefly  considered  the  ques- 
tion whether  iron  was  or  was  not  used  before  bronze.  He 
said :  "It  has  always  appeared  to  me  reasonable  to  infer 
from  metallurgical  considerations  that  the  age  of  iron  would 
have  preceded  the  age  of  -bronze.  The  primitive  method, 
not  yet  wholly  extinct,  of  extracting  iron  from  its  ores  is  a 
much  simpler  process  than  that  of  producing  bronze,  and  in- 
dicates a  much  less  advanced  state  of  the  metallurgic  arts. 
In  the  case  of  iron  all  that  is  necessary  is  to  heat  the  ore 
strongly  in  contact  with  charcoal ;  whereas,  in  the  case  of 
bronze,  which  is  an  alloy  of  copper  and  tin,  both  copper  and 
tin  have  to  be  obtained  by  smelting  their  respective  tores 
separately,  to  be  subsequently  melted  together  in  due  propor- 
tions, and  the  resulting  alloy  to  be  cast  in  moulds,  requiring 
considerable  skill  in  their  preparation." 

Iron  was  doubtless  first  used  in  Western  Asia,  the  birth- 


THE  smith  also  sitting  by  the  anvil,  and  considering  the  iron 
work,  the  vapour  of  the  fire  wasteih  his  flesh,  and  he  fighteth  with 
the  heat  of  the  furnace :  the  noise  of  the  hammer  and  the  anvil  is 
ever  in  his  ears,  and  his  eyes  look  still  upon  the  pattern  of  the 
thing  that  he  maketh ;  he  setteth  his  mind  to  finish  his  work,  and 
watcheth  to  polish  it  perfectly. — Ecclesiasticus,  38,  28. 


THE  MANUFACTURE  OE  IRON 
IN  ALL  AGES, 


CHAPTER   I. 
THE    EARLIEST    USE    OF    IRON. 

THE  use  of  iron  can  be  traced  to  the  earliest  ages  of 
antiquity.  Copper  and  bronze,  or  brass,  may  have  been  used! 
at  as  early  a  period  as  iron,  and  for  many  centuries  after 
their  use  began  they  undoubtedly  superseded  iron  to  a  large 
extent,  but  the  common  theory  that  there  was  a  copper  or  a 
bronze  age  before  iron  was  either  known  or  used  is  discred- 
ited by  Old  Testament  history,  by  the  earlier  as  well  as  the 
later  literature  of  the  ancient  Greeks,  and  by  the  discoveries 
of  modern  antiquarians. 

In  his  inaugural  address  as  President  of  the  Iron  and 
Steel  Institute,  delivered  in  May,  1885,  Dr.  John  Percy,  the 
eminent  English  metallurgist,  briefly  considered  the  ques- 
tion whether  iron  was  or  was  not  used  before  bronze.  He 
said  :  "It  has  always  appeared  to  me  reasonable  to  infer 
from  metallurgical  considerations  that  the  age  of  iron  would 
have  preceded  the  age  of  -bronze.  The  primitive  method, 
not  yet  wholly  extinct,  of  extracting  iron  from  its  ores  is  a 
much  simpler  process  than  that  of  producing  bronze,  and  in- 
dicates a  much  less  advanced  state  of  the  metallurgic  arts. 
In  the  case  of  iron  all  that  is  necessary  is  to  heat  the  ore 
strongly  in  contact  with  charcoal ;  whereas,  in  the  case  of 
bronze,  which  is  an  alloy  of  copper  and  tin,  both  copper  and 
tin  have  to  be  obtained  by  smelting  their  respective  tores 
separately,  to  be  subsequently  melted  together  in  due  propor- 
tions, and  the  resulting  alloy  to  be  cast  in  moulds,  requiring 
considerable  skill  in  their  preparation." 

Iron  was  doubtless  first  used  in  Western  Asia,  the  birth- 


Z  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

place  of  the  human  race,  and  in  the  northern  parts  of  Africa 
which  are  near  to  Asia.  Tubal-cain,  who  was  born  in  the 
seventh  generation  from  Adam,  is  described  in  King  James's 
version  of  the  4th  chapter  of  Genesis  tas  "an  instructor  of 
every  artificer  in  brass  and  iron."  In  the  revised  version, 
which  appeared  in  1885,  he  is  described  as  "the  forger  of 
every  cutting  instrument  of  ]prass  and  iron."  The  Egyptians, 
whose  existence  as  a  nation  dates  from  the  second  genera- 
tion after  Noah,  and  whose  civilization  is  the  most  ancient  of 
which  we  have  any  exact  knowledge,  were  at  an  early  peri- 
od familiar  with  both  the  use  and  the  manufacture  of  iron, 
although  very  little  iron  ore  has  ever  been  found  within  the 
boundaries  of  Egypt  itself.  Iron  tools  are  mentioned  by  He- 
rodotus as  having  been  used  in  the  construction  of  the  pyr- 
amids. In  the  sepulchres  at  Thebes  and  Memphis,  cities  of 
.such  great  antiquity  that  their  origin  is  lost  -in  obscurity, 
butchers  are  represented  as  using  tools  the  colors  of  which 
lead  antiquarians  to  conclude  that  they  were  made  of  iron 
or  steel.  Iron  sickles  are  also  pictured  in  the  tombs  at 
Memphis.  At  Thebes  numerous  articles  of  iron  have  been 
found  which  are  preserved  by  the  New  York  Historical  So- 
ciety and  are  about  three  thousand  years  old.  They  include 
an  iron  helmet,  with  a  neck-guard  in  chain  armor ;  a  frag- 
ment of  a  breastplate,  made  of  pieces  of  iron  in  the  form  of 
scales,  one  of  which  takes  the  shape  of  a  cartouche  and  has 
stamped  thereon  the  name  of  the  Egyptian  king,  Shishak, 
who  invaded  Jerusalem  971  years  before  Christ ;  and  an  iron 
arrow-head.  A  war-club,  studded  with  iron  spikes,  and  an 
iron  instrument  with  a  wooden  handle,  both  found  at  Sakka- 
rah,  in  Egypt,  are  in  the  same  collection,  which  was  made  by 
Dr.  Henry  Abbott,  an  English  surgeon,  during  a  residence  of 
twenty  years  in  Cairo,  where  he  died  on  March  30,  1859. 

Thothmes  the  First,  who  is  supposed  to  have  reigned 
about  seventeen  centuries  before  Christ,  is  said,  in  a  long  in- 
scription at  Karnak,  to  have  received  from  the  chiefs,  trib- 
utary kings,  or  allied  sovereigns  of  Lower  Egypt  presents  of 
silver  and  gold,  "  bars  of  wrought  metal,  and  vessels  of  cop- 
per, and  of  bronze,  and  of  iron."  From  the  region  of  Mem- 
phis he  received  wine,  iron,  lead,  wrought  metal,  animals,  and 
other  products.  An  expedition  which  the  same  king  sent 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  3 

. 

against  Chadasha  brought  back  among  the  spoil  which  it 
had  taken  "  iron  of  the  mountains,  40  cubes." 

Belzoni  found  under  the  feet  of  one  of  the  sphinxes  at 
Karnak  an  iron  sickle  which  is  supposed  to  have  been  placed 
there  at  least  six  hundred  years  before  Christ.  In  1837  a 
piece  of  iron  was  taken  from  an  inner  joint  of  the  great 
pyramid  at  Gizeh  under  circumstances  which  justify  the 
theory  that  it  is  as  old  as  the  pyramid  itself.  Both  of  these 
relics  are  preserved  in  the  British  Museum.  The  reference  to 
iron  in  Deuteronomy,  iv.  20,  apparently  indicates  that  in  the 
time  of  Moses  the  Egyptians  were  engaged  in  its  manufac- 
ture, and  that  the  Israelites  were  at  least  as  familiar  with  the 
art  as  their  taskmasters.  "  But  the  Lord  hath  taken  you, 
and  brought  you  forth  out  of  the  iron  furnace,  even  out  of 
Egypt."  This  expression  is  repeated  in  1st  Kings,  viii.  51. 
A  small  piece  of  very  pure  iron  was  found  under  the  obelisk 
which  was  removed  from  Alexandria  to  New  York  in  1880 
by  Commander  H.  H.  Gorringe,  of  the  United  States  Navy. 
This  obelisk  was  erected  by  Thothmes  the  Third  at  Heliopo- 
lis  about  1600  years  before  Christ,  and  removed  to  Alexandria 
twenty-two  years  before  the  Christian  era.  The  iron  found 
under  it  was  therefore  at  least  1900  years  old.  Commander 
Gorringe  died  in  New  York  city  on  July  7,  1885. 

As  iron  ore  of  remarkable  richness  is  now  found  in  Al- 
geria, in  the  northern  part  of  Africa,  occupying  the  territory 
of  ancient  Carthage,  it  is  entirely  reasonable  to  suppose  that 
the  Carthaginians,  nearly  a  thousand  years  before  Christ,  and 
the  Libyans  and  other  native  inhabitants  whom  the  Cartha- 
ginians succeeded,  would  not  be  behind  their  Egyptian  cotem- 
poraries  in  a  knowledge  of  the  use  and  manufacture  of  iron. 
The  Libyans  were  a  highly  civilized  people.  It  is  certain 
that  the  iro'n  mines  of  Algeria  were  worked  by  the  Romans 
before  the  Christian  era.  The  native  tribes  in  the  interior  of 
Africa  have  long  made  iron  by  the  most  primitive  methods. 

The  development  in  modern  times  of  the  rich  iron  ores  of 
Algeria  is  a  most  interesting  historical  fact,  as  the  Algerian 
mines  are  the  only  mines  of  iron  ore  in  either  Asia  or  Africa 
which  are  now  operated  on  an  extensive  scale,  and  the  only 
mines  worthy  of  mention  on  either  continent  from  which  the 
iron  and  steel  works  of  Europe  and  America  draw  a  part  of 


4  THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 

their  supplies  of  ore.  The  present  extensive  development  of 
the  Algerian  iron-ore  mines  dates  from  about  1844.  All  the 
iron  ore  that  is  mined  is  exported.  In  1872  the  shipments 
from  these  mines  to  European  countries,  especially  to  France, 
had  greatly  increased.  In  that  year  the  total  production  of 
the  mines  was  nearly  400,000  tons.  The  total  production  in 
1886  was  492,936  tons. 

Iron  ore  is  supposed  to  have  been  mined  in  Morocco  long 
before  the  beginning  of  the  Carthaginian  rule  in  Northern 
Africa,  and  it  is  said  that  old  Mauritanian  iron-ore  mines  can 
yet  be  traced  at  the  foot  of  the  Djebel  Hadyd,  a  few  miles 
from  Mogadore,  on  the  Atlantic  coast. 

The  use  of  iron  and  the  art  of  manufacturing  it  were  in- 
troduced into  the  southern  and  western  portions  of  Arabia 
at  an  early  day,  and  this  may  have  been  done  by  the  Egyp- 
tians ;  it  is  at  least  fully  established  that  some  of  their  own 
works  were  located  east  of  the  Red  sea.  The  ruins  of  exten- 
sive iron  works  of  great  antiquity  and  of  undoubted  Egyp- 
tian origin  were  discovered  by  Mr.  Hartland  near  the  Wells 
of  Moses,  in  the  Sinaitic  peninsula,  about  1873.  They  are 
fully  described  by  St.  John  V.  Day,  in  his  Prehistoric  Use 
of  Iron  and  Steel.  Large  heaps  of  iron  cinder, -very  rich  in 
iron,  are  found  near  the  works.  The  "  iron  furnace", from 
which  the  Israelites  were  brought  forth  may  have  embrac- 
ed these  works.  The  countries  which  lie  south  of  Egypt  are 
supposed  by  some  antiquarian  writers  to  have  made  iron  in 
large  quantities  in  prehistoric  times. 

Iron  was  known  to  the  Chaldeans,  the  Babylonians,  and 
the  Assyrians,  who  were  cotemporaries  of  the  early  Egyp- 
tians. Some  writers  suppose  that  the  Egyptians  derived  their 
supply  of  iron  principally  from  these  Asiatic  neighbors  and 
from  the  Arabians.  Ornaments  of  iron  have  been  found  in 
Chaldean  ruins,  and  Chaldean  inscriptions  show  that  iron  wras 
known  to  the  most  ancient  inhabitants  of  Mesopotamia.  In 
the  ruins  of  Nineveh  the  English  antiquarian,  Layard,  found 
many  articles  of  iron  and  various  inscriptions  referring  to  its 
use.  Among  the  articles  discovered  by  him  were  iron  scales 
of  armor,  from  two  to  three  inches  in  length.  "  Two  or  three 
baskets  were  filled  with  these  relics."  He  also  found  "  a  per- 
fect helmet  of  iron,  inlaid  with  copper  bands."  In  the  Brit- 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  5 

ish  Museum  several  tools  of  iron  are  preserved  which  were 
found  at  Nineveh  by  Layard,  including  a  saw  and  a  pick. 
The  art  of  casting  bronze  over  iron,  which  has  only  recently 
been  introduced  into  modern  metallurgy,  was  known  to  the 
Assyrians.  At  Babylon  iron  was  used  in  the  fortifications  of 
the  city  just  previous  to  its  capture  by  Cyrus,  in  the  sixth 
century  before  Christ.  In  a  celebrated  inscription  Nebuchad- 
nezzar declares  :  "  With  pillars  and  beams  plated  with  copper 
and  strengthened  with  iron  I  built  up  its  gates."  The  huge 
stones  of  the  bridge  built  by  his  daughter  Nitocris  were  held 
together  by  bands  of  iron  fixed  in  place  by  molten  lead. 

The  Book  of  Job,  which  relates  to  a  patriarchal  period  be- 
tween Abraham  and  Moses,  contains  many  references  to  iron, 
even  to  "bars  of  iron,"  "barbed  irons,"  "the  iron  weapon," 
and  the  "  bow  of  steel."  In  the  19th  chapter  and  24th  verse 
the  "iron  pen,"  which  could  be  used  to  engrave  upon  a  rock, 
is  mentioned.  In  the  20th  chapter  and  24th  verse  iron  and 
steel  are  both  mentioned,  showing  that  in  the  time  of  Job  the 
two  metals  were  both  in  use.  "  He  shall  flee  from  the  iron 
1  weapon,  and  the  bow  of  steel  shall  strike  him  through."  In 
the  28th  chapter  and  2d  verse  it  is  declared  that  "  iron  is 
taken  out  of  the  earth."  Job  is  supposed  to  have  lived  in 
the  northern  part  of  Arabia,  in  the  land  of  Uz,  which  was 
separated  by  the  Euphrates  from  Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  where 
Abraham  was  born.  Iron  ore  of  remarkable  richness  is  said 
to  be  still  found  between  the  Euphrates  and  the  Tigris. 

Moses  led  the  children  of  Israel  out  of  Egypt  fifteen  or 
sixteen  hundred  years  before  the  Christian  era.  In  the  story 
of  their  wanderings  iron  is  frequently  mentioned.  When  the 
Israelites  spoiled  the  Midianites  they  took  from  them  iron 
and  other  metals.  "An  instrument  of  iron"  is  mentioned  in 
Numbers,  xxxv.  16.  Canaan,  the  land  of  promise,  is  described 
by  Moses  in  Deuteronomy,  viii.  9,  as  "  a  land  whose  stones 
are  iron."  Iron  is  said  to  be  still  made  in  small  quantities 
in  the  Lebanon  mountains.  In  Deuteronomy,  xxvii.  5,  6, 
and  in  Joshua,  viii.  31,  the  use  of  iron  tools  in  building  an 
altar  of  "whole  stones"  to  the  Lord  is  prohibited,  which 
shows  that  the  Israelites  in  the  days  of  Moses  not  only  pos- 
sessed a  knowledge  of  iron  tools  which  would  cut  stone,  but 
that  the  Egyptians,  from  whom  they  had  recently  separated, 


6  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

must  have  possessed  the  same  knowledge.     In  Deuteronomy, 
xxviii.  48,  a  "yoke  of  iron"  is  mentioned. 

After  the  Israelites  came  into  possession  of  Canaan  iron 
is  frequently  mentioned  in  their  history,  some  of  the  earliest 
references  being  to  chariots  of  iron,  which  the  Canaanites 
used  in  their  wars  with  them,  and  to  various  agricultural  im- 
plements and  other  tools  of  iron  and  to  iron  weapons  of  war. 
The  references  to  chariots  of  iron  in  Joshua,  xvii.  16,  and  in 
Judges,  i.  19,  and  iv.  3,  show  that  the  Canaanites  were  far 
advanced  in  the  military  art.  In  the  elaborate  description  of 
the  armor  of  Goliath  it  is  said  that  "  his  spear's  head  weighed 
six  hundred  shekels  of  iron."  Axes  and  saws  and  harrows  of 
iron  are  mentioned  in  the  reign  of  David,  and  axes  and  ham- 
mers and  tools  of  iron  are  mentioned  in  the  reign  of  Solo- 
mon. In  Proverbs,  xxvii.  17,  Solomon  speaks  of  one  use  of 
iron  which  shows  that  knives  must  have  been  made  of  it  in 
his  day.  "  Iron  sharpeneth  iron ;  so  a  man  sharpeneth  the 
countenance  of  his  friend."  We  read  also  in  Ecclesiastes,  x. 
10  :  "  If  the  iron  be  blunt,  and  he  do  not  whet  the  edge,  then 
must  he  put  to  more  strength."  When  David,  about  a  thou-  ' 
sand  years  before  the  Christian  era,  made  preparations  for 
the  building  of  the  temple  he  "  prepared  iron  in  abundance 
for  the  nails  for  the  doors  of  the  gates  and  for  the  joinings ; " 
and  in  his  instructions  to  Solomon  concerning  it  he  said  that 
he  had  prepared  "  brass  and  iron  without  weight,"  and  that 
"  of  the  gold,  the  silver,  and  the  brass,  and  the  iron,  there  is 
no  number."  When  Solomon  came  to  build  the  temple  he 
sent  to  Hiram,  king  of  Tyre,  for  "  a  man  cunning  to  work  in 
gold,  and  in  silver,  and  in  brass,  and  in  iron."  The  Phoeni- 
cians were  celebrated  as  workers  in  all  the  metals,  and  Tyre 
was  their  great  city.  Isaiah  speaks  of  harrows  of  iron,  and 
in  the  34th  verse  of  the  10th  chapter  iron  axes  are  clearly 
referred  to.  "And  he  shall  cut  down  the  thickets  of  the  for- 
ests with  iron."  Jeremiah  speaks  of  "an  iron  pillar."  In 
Amos  we  read  of  "  threshing  instruments  of  iron." 

The  great  strength  of  iron  is  frequently  referred  to  in 
the  Old  Testament.  In  Psalms,  ii.  9,  we  read  :  "  Thou  shalt 
break  them  with  a  rod  of  iron ; "  in  cvii.  10,  we  read  of  those 
who  sit  in  darkness  as  "  being  bound  in  affliction  and  iron  ; " 
in  cxlix.  8,  we  read  also  of  binding  "  kings  with  chains,  and 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  7 

their  nobles  with  fetters  of  iron."  Daniel  says  that  "  iron 
breaketh  in  pieces  and  subdueth  all  things." 

Some  writers  have  contended  that  the  word  which  is 
translated  iron  in  the  Old  "Testament  frequently  means  some 
other  metal.  It  is  a  sufficient  answer  to  this  criticism  to  say 
that  the  translators  of  King  James's  version  and  of  the  re- 
vised version  of  1885  agree  in  nearly  every  instance  in  their 
use  of  the  word  iron ;  but  to  this  agreement  of  learned  men 
three  hundred  years  apart  the  yet  more  significant  fact  may 
be  added  that  iron  is  frequently  mentioned  in  the  Old  Tes- 
tament in  connection  with  other  metals.  In  addition  to  the 
quotations  already  given  sustaining  this  statement  the  reader 
is  referred  to  Deuteronomy,  xxviii.  23  ;  1st  Chronicles,  xxix.  2 
and  7 ;  Isaiah,  xlv.  2,  and  Ix.  17 ;  Ezekiel,  xxii.  20,  and  xxvii. 
12.  It  may  also  be  added  that  in  Martin  Luther's  translation 
of  the  Old  Testament  into  German  he  always  uses  the  word 
eisen  wherever  the  word  iron  appears  in  English  translations. 

In  Jeremiah,  xv.  12,  the  question  is  asked  by  the  proph- 
et :  "  Shall  iron  break  the  northern  iron  and  the  steel  ?  "  The 
northern  iron  and  steel  here  referred  to  were  probably  prod- 
ucts of  Chalybia,  a  small  district  of  Armenia,  lying  on  the 
southeastern  shore  of  the  Black  sea,  the  inhabitants  of  which, 
called  Chalibees  or  Chalybians,  were  famous  in  the  days  of 
Asiatic  pre-eminence  for  the  fine  quality  of  their  iron  and 
steel.  Herodotus,  in  the  fifth  century  before  Christ,  speaks  of 
"  the  Chalybians,  a  people  of  ironworkers."  They  are  said  to 
have  invented  the  art  of  converting  iron  into  steel,  but  it  is 
probable  that,  as  they  used  magnetic  sand,  which  is  very  free 
from  impurities  and  is  easily  smelted  in  small  quantities, 
they  made  steel  mainly.  Latin  and  Greek  names  for  steel 
were  derived  from  the  name  of  this  people.  From  the  same 
source  we  obtain  the  words  now  in  common  use,  chalybean 
and  chalybeate. 

Other  eastern  nations  doubtless  made  steel  at  as  early  a 
day  as  the  Chalybians.  In  Ezekiel,  xxvii.  12,  the  merchants 
of  Tarshish  are  said  to  supply  Tyre  with  iron  and  other  met- 
als, and  in  the  19th  verse  of  the  same  chapter  the  merchants 
of  Dan  and  Javan  are  said  to  supply  its  market  with  bright 
iron.  Tarshish  is  supposed  to  have  been  a  city  in  the  south 
of  Spain,  and  Dan  and  Javan  were  possibly  cities  in  the .  south 


THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

of  Arabia.  The  name  Tarshish  may,  however,  have  referred 
generally  to  the  countries  lying  on  the  western  shore  of  the 
Mediterranean  and  beyond  the  Pillars  of  Hercules.  Dan  and 
Javan  may  have  supplied  iron  made  in  the  southern  part  of 
Arabia,  or  they  may  have  traded  in  the  bright  iron,  or  steel, 
of  India.  The  period  embraced  in  the  references  quoted  from 
Ezekiel  was  about  six  hundred  years  before  Christ.  Both 
Tyre  and  Sidon  traded  in  all  the  products  of  the  east  and 
the  west  for  centuries  before  and  for  some 'time  after  Ezekiel, 
and  iron  was  one  of  the  products  which  they  supplied  to  their 
neighbors,  the  Israelites. 

The  Persians  and  their  northern  neighbors,  the  Medes, 
made  iron  and  steel  long  before  the  Christian  era,  and  so  did 
the  Parthians  and  other  Scythian  tribes.  The  Parthian  ar- 
row was  first  tipped  with  bronze,  but  afterwards  with  steel. 
The  Parthian  kings  are  said  to  have  engaged  with  pride  in 
the  forging  and  sharpening  of  arrow-heads.  Herodotus  says 
that  an  "  antique  iron  sword  "  was  planted  on  the  top  of  the 
mount  of  worship  used  by  the  Scythians.  Iron  is  still  made 
in  Persia  by  primitive  methods,  and  so  also  is  steel,  but  both 
in  small  quantities. 

India  appears  to  have  been  acquainted  with  the  manufac- 
ture of  iron  and  steel  from  a  very  early  period.  Day  says 
that  in  the  British  Museum  are  iron  and  steel  tools,  probably 
three  thousand  years  old,  which  were  found  in  recent  Indian 
excavations.  Ktesias,  a  Greek,  who  lived  400  years  before 
Christ,  mentions  Indian  iron.  When  Alexander  defeated  Po- 
rus,  one  of  the  Punjaub  kings,  in  the  fourth  century  before 
the  Christian  era,  Porus  gave  him  thirty  pounds  of  Indian 
steel,  or  wootz.  This  steel,  which  is  still  made  in  India  and 
Persia,  was  a  true  steel,  of  a  quality  unsurpassed  even  in  our 
day.  It  was  and  still  is  manufactured  by  a  process  of  great 
simplicity,  similar  to  that  by  which  crucible  steel  is  now 
made.  Ages  ago  the  city  of  Damascus  manufactured  its  fa- 
mous swords  from  Indian  and  Persian  steel.  Swords  are  still 
made  at  Damascus,  but  of  inferior  quality.  The  cutlers  of 
India,  however,  now  make  the  best  of  swords  from  native 
steel.  George  Thompson  told  Wendell  Phillips  that  he  saw 
a  man  in  Calcutta  throw  a  handful  of  floss  silk  into  the  air 
which  a  Hindoo  cut  into  pieces  with  his  sabre. 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  9 

The  people  of  India  further  appear  to  have  become  fa- 
miliar at  an  early  period  in  their  history  with  processes  for 
the  manufacture  of  iron  on  a  large  scale  which  have  since 
been  lost.  A  cylindrical  wrought-iron  pillar,  which  weighs 
many  tons,  is  now  standing  at  the  principal  gate  of  the  an- 
cient mosque  of  the  Kutub,  near  Delhi,  in  India.  A  highly 
ornamented  capital  forms  the  upper  part  of  the  pillar.  An 
inscription  in  Sanscrit  is  usually  supposed  to  assign  the  erec- 
tion of  the  pillar  to  the  fourth  century  of  the  Christian  era. 
In  the  ruins  of  Indian  temples  of  great  antiquity  there  have 
been  found  wrought-iron  beams  similar  in  size  and  appear- 
ance to  those  used  in  the  construction  of  buildings  at  the 
present  time.  These  iron  beams  are  fully  described  by  Day. 
Two  American  scientists  have  visited  in  recent  years  the 
iron  pillar  at  Delhi,  and  have  favored  us  with  their  impres- 
sions concerning  it — Mr.  John  C.  F.  Randolph,  of  New  York 
city,  visiting  it  in  1874,  and  Dr.  Frank  Cowan,  of  Greens- 
burg,  Pennsylvania,  in  1884.  Mr.  Randolph  says  :  "  I  sought 
to  obtain  a  few  grains  of  the  metal  for  analysis,  but  it  com- 
pletely dulled  two  cold  chisels  worked  by  my  servant,  with- 
out producing  any  marks  on  the  base  of  the  pillar."  Dr. 
Cowan  circumstantially  describes  the  pillar  as  follows  :  "  The 
iron  pillar  is  a  polished  and  inscribed,  cylindrical  and  taper- 
ing, shaft  of  metal,  surmounted  with  a  capital  which  con- 
sists of  a  series  of  beveled  rims  one  above  the  other ;  and, 
as  it  has  been  found  to  be  by  measurement,  it  has  a  total 
height  of  23  feet  and  8  inches,  about  22  feet  and  6  inches  of 
which  are  above  the  ground  and  14  inches  below,  and  a  di- 
ameter below  of  16.4  inches  and  above  of  12.05  inches.  The 
capital  is  about  3£  feet  long." 

The  period  at  which  China  first  made  iron  is  uncertain, 
but  great  antiquity  is  claimed  for  its  manufacture  in  that 
mysterious  country.     Iron  is  mentioned  in  a  Chinese  record 
which  is  said  to  have  been  written  two  thousand  years  be- 
fore Christ,  and  in  other  ancient  Chinese  writings  iron  and 
steel  are  both   mentioned.     Pliny  the  Elder,  writing  in  the 
first  century  of  the  Christian  era,  thus  speaks  of  the  iron  of 
the  Seres,  which  is  the  Latin  name  for  the  people  of  China  : 
j"  Howbeit,  as   many  kinds  of  iron  as  there  be,  none   shall 
1  match  in  goodness  the  steel  that  cometh  from  the  Seres,  for 


10  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

this  commodity  also,  as  hard  ware  as  it  is,  they  send  and 
sell  with  their  soft  silks  and  fine  furs.  In  a  second  degree 
of  goodness  may  be  placed  the  Parthian  iron."  This  early 
reference  to  Chinese  steel  is  historically  very  valuable. 

Iron  is  supposed  to  have  been  made  in  small  quantities 
in  Japan  and  Corea  in  ancient  times.  It  is  now  made  by 
primitive  methods  in  both  these  countries  and  in  China,  al- 
though modern  methods  have  been  attempted  in  both  China 
and  Japan.  The  remarkable  skill  and  taste  of  the  Japanese 
metal-workers  in  modern  times,  including  their  production 
of  swords  of  the  finest  temper  and  keenest  edge  and  other  ar- 
ticles of  iron  and  steel,  is  well  known  and  is  a  constant  mar- 
vel to  the  people  of  other  countries.  The  Chinese  and  the 
Coreans  are  also  noted  for  their  skill  as  armorers  and  in  the 
manufacture  of  various  domestic  utensils  of  iron  and  steel. 

Further  inquiry  in  these  pages  into  the  evidences  of  the 
use  of  iron  by  the  oldest  nations  of  antiquity  is  unnecessary. 
It  may  be  assumed  as  susceptible  of  abundant  proof  that 
the  knowledge  of  the  use  of  iron  was  common  to  the  people 
of  Asia  and  of  Northern  Africa  long  prior  to  the  Christian 
era.  The  Egyptians  and  their  immediate  neighbors  in  Asia, 
and  the  Libyans  and  others  in  Africa,  probably  made  iron 
long  before  the  days  of  Moses.  The  Phoenicians  would  carry 
the  art  of  making  iron  to  their  own  great  colony,  Carthage, 
which  was  founded  as  early  at  least  as  the  ninth  century 
before  Christ,  and  to  all  the  colonies  and  nations  inhabiting 
the  northern  and  southern  and  western  shores  of  the  Medi- 
terranean. Phoenician  and  Carthaginian  merchants  obtained 
iron  from  such  western  countries  as  Morocco  and  Spain,  and 
possibly  even  from  India  and  China  in  the  east,  as  well  as 
from  nearer  sources.  But  in  time  the  merchants  of  Tyre 
and  the  ships  of  Tarshish  deserted  the  places  that  long  had 
known  them ;  empire  after  empire  fell  in  ruins ;  and  with  the 
fading  away  of  Asiatic  and  African  civilization  and  mag- 
nificence the  manufacture  and  the  use  of  iron  in  Asia  and 
Africa  ceased  to  advance.  Egypt  has  certainly  not  made 
iron  for  about  two  thousand  years,  and  probably  no  more 
iron  is  made  in  all  Asia  to-day  than  was  made  in  its  borders 
twenty-five  centuries  ago,  when  Babylon  was  "  the  glory  of 
kingdoms,  the  beauty  of  the  Chaldees'  excellency." 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  11 

CHAPTEE   II. 
THE    EARLY   USE    OF   IRON   IN   EUROPE. 

THE  authentic  history  of  the  use  of  iron  in  Europe  does 
not  begin  until  about  the  period  of  the  first  Olympiad,  cor- 
responding to  the  year  776  before  the  Christian  era,  although 
Grecian  poetry  and  the  fables  of  the  Grecian  heroic  age  have 
transmitted  to  us  many  references  to  iron  long  prior  to  that 
period.  Authentic  Grecian  history  itself  does  not  begin  until 
the  first  Olympiad. 

One  of  the  earliest  of  Grecian  fables  tells  of  the  hurling 
of  Hephaestus,  or  Vulcan,  the  Greek  god  of  fire,  from  Olym- 
pus by  Jupiter,  and  of  his  falling  upon  the  island  of  Lem- 
iios,  where  he  established  iron  forges,  afterwards  forging  the 
armor  of  Achilles  and  the  weapons  of  Hercules.  About  the 
time  of  Moses,  fifteen  or  sixteen  centuries  before  Christ,  the 
Phoenicians  are  said  to  have  introduced  into  Greece  the  art 
of  working  in  iron  and  other  metals.  Minos,  king  of  Crete,  is 
said  to  have  been  indebted  to  them  for  the  tools  wrhich  ena- 
bled him  to  build  his  powerful  fleet.  In  the  fifteenth  centu- 
ry before  Christ  the  burning  of  the  forests  on  Mount  Ida,  in 
Crete,  is  said  to  have  accidentally  communicated  to  the  inhab- 
itants the  art  of  obtaining  iron  from  native  ores.  This  dis- 
covery enabled  the  Ideei  Dactyli,  who  were  priests  of  Cybele, 
to  introduce  the  manufacture  of  iron  and  steel  into  Phrygia, 
a  Greek  colony  in  Asia  Minor. 

So  read  some  of  the  stories  which  have  come  down  to  us 
from  the  heroic  age  of  Greece,  all  of  which  may  be  wholly 
fabulous,  but  there  is  nothing  improbable  in  the  conclusion 
which  may  be  derived  from  them,  that  they  point  to  a  very 
early  use  of  iron  by  the  Greeks.  From  Phoenicia  certainly, 
and  probably  also  from  Egypt,  they  would  be  likely  to  de- 
rive some  knowledge  of  its  use  in  the  mechanic  arts  about 
a  thousand  years  before  Christ.  It  is  worthy  of  notice  that 
the  mythologies  of  both  Greece  and  Egypt  attributed  the  in- 
vention of  the  art  of  manufacturing  iron  to  the  gods,  a  fact 
which  of  itself  may  be  regarded  as  affording  sufficient  proof 


12  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

of  the  great  antiquity  of  the  art  in  both  of  these  countries. 
The  poems  of  Homer,  who  is  supposed  to  have  lived 
about  850  years  before  the  Christian  era,  and  therefore  be- 
fore the  period  of  authentic  Grecian  history,  make  frequent 
mention  of  iron.  The  art  of  hardening  and  tempering  steel 
is  fully  described  in  the  reference  to  the  plunging  of  the  fire- 
brand of  Ulysses  into  the  eye  of  Polyphemus,  an  act  which  is 
likened  to  that  of  the  smith  who  "  plunges  the  loud-hissing 
axe  into  cold  water  to  temper  it,  for  hence  is  the  strength  of 
iron."  It  would  appear,  however,  from  the  offer  by  Achilles 
of  a  "  mass  of  iron,  shapeless  from  the  forge,"  as  a  prize  at 
the  funeral  games  of  Patroclus,  that  iron  was  not  abundant  in 
Greece  at  the  time  of  the  Trojan  war,  nor  in  the  days  of  Ho- 
mer himself.  Troy  fell  in  the  year  1184  before  the  Christian 
era.  Dr.  Schliemann  has  found  no  traces  of  iron  in  its  ruins. 
The  address  of  Achilles  to  the  Greeks  when  offering  the  prize 
indicates  how  valuable  iron  was  to  them  in  the  heroic  age. 

Stand  forth,  whoever  will  contend  for  this ; 
And  if  broad  fields  and  rich  be  his  this  mass 
Will  last  him  many  years.    The  man  who  tends 
His  flocks,  or  guides  his  plow,  need  not  be  sent 
To  town  for  iron :  he  will  have  it  here. 

When  Pisander  and  Hippolochus  begged  Agamemnon  to 
save  their  lives  they  offered  him  as  ransom  the  "  treasures " 
in  the  houses  of  Antimachus,  their  father,  "  brass,  gold,  and 
well-wrought  iron."  Homer  mentions  steel  axes  as  valuable 
prizes  to  be  contended  for  .in  the  Grecian  games,  and  he  also 
mentions  steel  weapons  of  war,  although  rarely.  He  speaks 
again  of  some  iron  as  being  bright  and  white,  the  inference 
being  that  steel  is  referred  to.  The  Right  Honorable  William 
E.  Gladstone,  in  his  Homeric  Synchronisms,  says  :  "  Iron  is  in 
Homer  extremely  rare  and  precious.  He  mentions  nothing 
massive  that  is  made  of  this  material."  Mr.  Gladstone  cites  a 
number  of  references  in  Homer  to  iron  and  steel — the  arrow- 
head of  Pandaros,  the  dagger  of  Achilles,  "  the  cutting  tool 
of  the  chariot-maker  for  such  fine  work  as  shaping  the  felloe 
of  the  wheel,"  a  knife  for  slaying  oxen,  and  axes  and  adzes 
of  steel. 

Hesiod,  who  is  supposed  to  have  been  cotemporary  with 
Homer,  mentions  iron  and  some  of  its  important  qualities. 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  13 

He  uses  the  phrases,  bright  iron  and  black  iron.  Lycur- 
gus,  who  is  supposed  to  have  lived  about  the  time  of  Homer 
and  Hesiod,  is  said  to  have  required  the  Spartans  to  use  iron 
as  money ;  he  "  allowed  nothing  but  bars  of  iron  to  pass  in 
exchange  for  every  commodity."  These  bars,  for  which  iron 
rings  or  quoits  were  afterwards  substituted,  may  have  been 
made  from  the  iron  ores  which  were  found  in  abundance  in 
Laconia,  or  they  may  have  been  obtained  abroad. 

We  come  next  to  that  period  of  Grecian  history  which 
introduces  us  to  historical  personages  and  historical  events. 
The  iron  ores  of  Elba  were  worked  by  the  Greeks  as  early  as 
the  year  700  before  Christ.  They  called  the  island  JSthalia, 
"  from  the  blazes  of  the  iron  works."  The  working  of  the 
ores  of  this  island  is  mentioned  by  Herodotus,  who  lived  in 
the  fifth  century  before  Christ ;  by  Diodorus,  a  Sicilian  his- 
torian of  the  first  century  before  Christ ;  and  by  Strabo,  a 
Greek  traveler  and  geographer,  who  lived  at  the  beginning  of 
the  Christian  era.  The  Phoenicians  made  iron  on  the  island 
of  Euboea  at  a  very  early  day,  and  the  Greeks  afterwards  fol- 
lowed the  same  pursuit  on  the  same  island.  Strabo  speaks 
of  the  mines  of  Eubcea  as  being  partially  exhausted  in  his 
day.  In  Bceotia,  on  the  mainland  of  Greece,  iron  was  also 
made  in  very  early  times,  and  probably  in  other  parts  of  the 
Grecian  mainland  and  on  the  Grecian  islands  where  iron  ore 
is  now  found.  .On  the  island  of  Seriphos  the  ore  is  so  rich 
that  many  cargoes  of  it  have  been  exported  to  the  United 
States  and  Great  Britain  in  recent  years. 

Herodotus  speaks  of  iron  heads  to  lances  and  arrows  in 
his  day.  He  also  mentions  a  silver  bowl  inlaid  with  iron, 
the  work  of  Glaucus  the  Chian,  which  Alyattes  dedicated  at 
Delphi  about  the  middle  of  the  sixth  century  before  Christ. 
Chalybian  steel  was  imported  into  Greece  in' the  time  of  He- 
rodotus ;  and  in  the  time  of  Aristotle,  who  lived  a  century 
later,  the  Greeks  were  themselves  familiar  with  the  manufac- 
ture of  steel.  Sophocles,  who  died  in  the  year  406  before 
Christ,  speaks  of  the  tempering  of  iron  in  water.  The  man- 
ufacture of  swords  of  steel  about  this  time  received  much 
attention  in  Greece,  as  it  did  elsewhere.  The  father  of  De- 
mosthenes was  a  manufacturer  of  arms,  and  probably  of  steel 
swords,  in  the  fourth  century  before  Christ.  Iron  and  steel 


14  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

weapons  began  to  displace  those  of  bronze  in  most  Mediter- 
ranean countries  soon  after  the  battle  of  Marathon,  which  was 
fought  in  the  year  490  before  Christ.  When  Xerxes  invaded 
Greece,  ten  years  after  the  battle  of  Marathon,  the  Assyrians 
in  his  army  carried  wooden  clubs  "  knotted  with  iron."  The 
use  of  iron  scythes  as  well  as  iron  sickles  was  common  among 
the  Greeks  about  this  time.  Dr.  Schliemann  says  that  iron 
was  known  to  the  Myceneans,  whose  capital  city,  Mycense, 
was  destroyed  in  the  year  468  before  Christ.  In  the  fourth 
century  before  Christ  Alexander  is  said  by  Pliny  to  have 
strengthened  a  bridge  over  the  Euphrates,  at  Zeugma,  with 
a  chain  made  of  links  of  iron. 

Daimachus,  a  writer  who  was  cotemporary  with  Alexan- 
der, enumerates  four  different  kinds  of  steel  and  their  uses, 
the  Chalybdic,  Synopic,  Lydian,  and  Lacedaemonian.  Each 
kind  of  steel  was  adapted  to  the  manufacture  of  particular 
tools.  From  the  Chalybdic  and  Synopic  were  made  ordi- 
nary tools ;  from  the  Lacedaemonian  were  made  files,  augers, 
chisels,  and  stone-cutting  implements ;  and  from  the  Lydian 
were  made  swords,  razors,  and  surgical  instruments.  The  ac- 
counts left  by  this  writer  and  by  other  writers  indicate  great 
proficiency  in  the  use  of  steel  by  the  Greeks,  and  the  posses- 
sion by  them  of  much  skill  in  its  manufacture. 

A  few  years  ago  some  peasants,  digging  near  the  banks 
of  the  Danube,  on  the  Hungarian  side,  opposite  to  Belgrade, 
turned  up  a  very  beautiful  and  finely  preserved  iron  or  steel 
helmet,  which  is  believed  to  be  a  specimen  of  antique  Greek 
work,  dating  from  probably  three  or  four  centuries  before 
the  Christian  era.  It  was  found  in  the  midst  of  wind-blown 
hillocks,  or  dunes,  of  dry,  shifting  sand ;  hence  probably  its 
excellent  state  of  preservation.  The  helmet  is  light  and  thin, 
but  by  no  means  flimsy  or  unsubstantial.  At  the  country 
house  of  Mr.  G.  P.  Morosini,  at  Biverdale,  on  the  Hudson 
river,  in  New  York,  is  a  costly  collection  of  arms  and  armor 
from  the  wars  of  long  ago,  which  includes  a  Greek  helmet 
dating  back  hundreds  of  years  before  Christ.  It  has  rusted 
through  in  two  places,  and  looks  now  like  old  sheet  iron. 

A  description  of  one  of  the  naval  monsters  constructed  by 
Archimedes  for  Hiero,  king  of  Syracuse,  about  the  middle  of 
the  third  century  before  the  Christian  era,  shows  the  great 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  15 

extent  to  which  the  use  of  iron  had  then  been  carried  by  the 
Greeks.  "  To  each  of  the  three  masts  was  attached  a  couple 
of  engines  which  darted  iron  bars  and  masses  of  lead  against 
the  enemy.  The  sides  of  the  ship  bristled  with  iron  spikes, 
designed  to  protect  it  against  boarding ;  and  on  all  sides  were 
likewise  grapples  which  could  be  flung  by  machines  into  the 
galleys  of  the  foe.  The  ship  was  supplied  with  twelve  anch- 
ors, of  which  four  were  of  wood  and  eight  of  iron." 

According  to  accepted  chronology  Rome  was  built  in  the 
year  753  before  the  Christian  era.  It  reached  the  culmina- 
tion of  its  power  about  the  end  of  the  first  century  of  that  era. 
The  period  from  its  foundation  to  the  beginning  of  its  de- 
cline embraced  about  nine  hundred  years.  During  the  first 
part  of  this  period  Rome  was  favored  with  the  experience  of 
older  nations  in  the  use  and  manufacture  of  iron,  and  during 
the  last  part  of  it  she  greatly  contributed  by  her  energy  and 
progressive  spirit  to  extend  its  use  and  increase  its  produc- 
tion. The  Greeks  were  the  great  teachers  of  the  Romans  in 
all  the  arts,  including  metallurgy ;  but  the  Etruscans,  who 
were  neighbors  of  the  Romans,  and  by  whom  they  were  in 
time  supplanted,  also  contributed  greatly  to  their  knowledge 
of  the  arts  of  ancient  civilization.  The  Etruscans,  however, 
owed  their  civilization  in  large  part  to  the  Tyrrhenian  Greeks, 
with  whom  they  coalesced  centuries  before  Rome  was  found- 
ed. Etruria  was  largely  devoted  to  commerce,  and  among  the 
countries  with  which  it  traded  were  Phoenicia  and  Carthage, 
as  well  as  Greece  and  its  colonies.  From  all  .these  countries 
Etruscan  civilization  was  invigorated  and  diversified,  and 
Rome  in  its  early  days  enjoyed  the  benefit  of  this  invigor- 
ation  and  diversification.  That  it  early  acquired  from  the 
Etruscans  a  knowledge  of  the  use  and  manufacture  of  iron 
can  easily  be  imagined,  and  subsequent  direct  contact  with 
Grecian  colonies  and  with  Greece  itself  would  extend  this 
knowledge. 

The  island  of  Elba  lay  off  the  Etruscan  coast,  and,  as  has 
already  been  stated,  its  iron  ores  were  extensively  used  by  the 
Greeks  about  the  time  when  Rome  was  founded.  Its  mines 
were  also  worked  by  the  Etruscans,  and  its  ores  were  smelted 
both  on  the  island  and  on  the  mainland.  They  were  also 
taken  to  other  countries  to  be  converted  into  iron.  After  a 


16  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

lapse  of  twenty-five  centuries  the  iron  ores  of  this  celebrated 
island  are  still  exported,  many  cargoes  annually  ^finding  their 
way  to  the  United  States.  The  Romans  would  also  obtain 
iron  from  the  islands  of  Corsica  and  Sardinia,  but  chiefly 
from  Corsica.  This  island  was  occupied  by  the  Ligurians 
and  the  Etruscans  about  the  time  of  the  founding  of  Rome, 
and  by  the  Etruscans  for  centuries  afterwards.  The  Cartha- 
ginians succeeded  the  Etruscans,  and  the  Romans  the  Car- 
thaginians. Iron  has  been  made  in  Corsica  from  the  earliest 
times,  and  is  still  made  in  small  quantities.  The  island  has 
given  its  name  to  the  Corsican  forge,  which  is  yet  in  use. 
A  few  years  ago  ten  of  these  forges  were  in  operation  in  Cor- 
sica, and  they  were  probably  identical  in  character  with  those 
which  were  used  on  the  island  when  Rome  was  founded. 

Iron  is  frequently  mentioned  in  the  early  history  of  Rome. 
A  war  between  the  Romans  and  the  Etruscans,  the  latter  be- 
ing led  by  their  king,  Porsenna,  occurred  in  the  year  507*  be- 
fore Christ,  and  among  the  conditions  of  peace  exacted  by 
the  victorious  Etruscan  king  was  one  which  prohibited  the 
Romans  from  using  iron  except  for  agricultural  purposes. 
This  incident  confirms  the  theory  that  iron  was  in  common 
use  by  the  Greeks  at  the  period  mentioned.  In  the  year  390 
before  Christ,  when  Rome  was  about  to  be  ransomed  from  the 
Gauls,  under  Brennus,  by  a  large  payment  of  gold,  Camillus, 
the  Roman  dictator,  indignantly  demurred,  and  declared  that 
Rome  should  be  ransomed  with  iron  and  not  with  gold,  and 
that  his  sword  alone  should  purchase  peace.  Another  nota- 
ble mention  of  iron  in  the  early  history  of  Rome  occurs  in 
the  account  of  the  defeat  of  the  Carthaginian  fleet  in  the  first 
Punic  war,  in  the  third  century  before  the  Christian  era.  The 
consul,  Duilius,  took  command  of  the  hastily-constructed  Ro- 
man fleet,  and  upon  encountering  the  Carthaginian  fleet  he 
connected  his  ships  with  those  of  the  enemy  by  means  of 
grappling-irons,  through  which,  and  the  superior  prowess  of 
the  Romans,  he  secured  for  Rome,  in  the  year  260  before 
Christ,  its  first  naval  triumph.  The  Etruscan  town  of  Pup- 
luna  is  said  to  have  furnished  Scipio  with  iron  in  the  second 
Punic  war,  and  it  is  stated  that  many  thousand  tons  of  scoria 
are  now  lying  on  the  beach  close  to  its  site. 

Some   of  the   swords   and  javelins    of   the  Romans   were 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  17 

certainly  made  of  iron,  or  more  likely  of  steel,  as  early  as 
the  fourth  century  before  the  Christian  era,  but  their  agri- 
cultural implements,  as  has  been  explained  in  the  reference 
to  Etruria,  were  made  of  iron  at  an  earlier  period.  The  Ro- 
man battering-ram,  which  was  borrowed  from  the  Greeks,  had 
a  head  of  iron,  and  iron  rings  were  placed  around  its  beam. 
The  Romans  used  this  engine  of  war  at  the  siege  of  Syracuse 
in  the  year  212  before  Christ.  Prior  to  this  time  iron  and 
steel  tools  were  in  common  use  among  the  shipwrights,  car- 
penters, masons,  and  other  tradesmen  of  Rome.  At  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Christian  era  iron  was  in  general  use  through- 
out the  Roman  empire,  the  supply  being  derived  from  many 
countries  which  were  subject  to  its  sway.  In  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles,  xii.  10,  is  a  statement  which  indicates  that  iron  was 
used  at  this  period  for  architectural  purposes  and  in  public 
works.  "  When  they  were  past  the  first  and  the  second  ward 
they  came  unto  the  iron  gate  that  leadeth  unto  the  city." 
Iron  was,  however,  used  at  this  time  especially  for  tools,  ag- 
ricultural implements,  and  weapons  of  offense  and  defense. 

Pliny  says  that  "  iron  ores  are  to  be  found  almost  every- 
where." He  describes  in  detail  the  various  uses  to  which 
iron  was  applied  in  his  day,  and  places  it  at  the  head  of  all 
the  metals.  Vestiges  of  iron  used  by  the  Romans  in  the  first 
century  after  Christ  have  been  found  in  the  ruins  of  the 
Coliseum,  which  was  built  by  the  emperor  Vespasian.  This 
iron  was  used  as  clamps  to  bind  together  the  stones  of  that 
remarkable  structure.  Iron  has  also  been  found  in  the  ruins 
of  Pompeii,  which  was  destroyed  about  the  time  the  Coliseum 
was  built ;  also  steel  surgical  instruments. 

In  the  northern  part  of  Italy,  just  south  of  the  Alps,  cor- 
responding to  Piedmont  and  Lombardy  of  the  present  day, 
iron  was  made  by  the  Romans  in  the  first  and  second  centu- 
ries before  the  Christian  era.  This  part  of  Italy  has  contin- 
ued to  make  small  quantities  of  iron  ever  since  the  days  of 
Pliny,  the  business  being  mainly  confined  to  small  forges 
and  blast  furnaces.  Pliny  speaks  of  the  excellence  of  the 
water  at  Comum,  now  Como,  for  tempering  iron,  although 
he  says  that  iron  ores  were  not  found  there.  Italy  was  very 
prominent  in  the  middle  ages  in  the  manufacture  of  orna- 
mental smithwork  of  iron,  and  for  the  manufacture  of  arms 


18  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

and  armor  its  great  city  of  Milan  was  widely  celebrated  from 
the  end  of  the  fourteenth  to  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

Among  the  provinces  which  contributed  largely  to  the  Ro- 
man supply  of  iron  was  Noricum,  corresponding  to  the  pres- 
ent Styria  and  Carinthia  in  Austria.  Both  Pliny  and  Ovid, 
who  lived  at  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  speak  of 
Norican  iron  as  being  of  superior  quality,  and  it  is  certain 
that  ferrum  noricum  was  celebrated  throughout  Italy  before 
their  day.  The  best  of  swords  were  made  from  it  in  the 
reign  of  Augustus  and  were  favorably  mentioned  by  Horace. 
The  spathic  ores  of  Styria  and  Carinthia  are  still  held  in 
high  favor ;  and  the  supply  of  ore,  especially  from  the  fa- 
mous iron  mountains  of  Erzberg  and  Hiittenberg,  showrs  no 
signs  of  exhaustion  at  the  end  of  twenty  centuries  of  almost 
constant  use.  Iron  is  still  made  in  these  provinces  of  Austria 
in  small  forges  which  are  almost  as  primitive  in  character* 
as  those  used  by  their  ancient  Celtic  inhabitants.  Celtic  and 
Roman  implements  and  medals,  including  a  coin  of  the  em- 
peror Nerva,  who  lived  in  the  first  century  of  the  Christian 
era,  have  been  found  in  mounds  of  slag  in  the  vicinity  of 
Carinthian  iron  mines. 

Cotemporaneously  with  the  working  by  the  Celts  of  the 
Norican  iron  mines,  the  Quadi,  who  inhabited  the  province 
of  Moravia,  lying  north  of  Noricum,  also  made  iron.  The 
geographer,  Ptolemy,  who  lived  in  the  second  century  of  the 
Christian  era,  makes  mention  of  the  Quadi  as  ironworkers. 
Iron  was  also  made  in  Hungary  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Christian  era.  A  late  writer,  Anton  Kerpely,  of  Buda-Pesth, 
says :  "  Even  in  the  time  of  the  Romans,  and  in  the  first 
century  of  our  era,  the  excellent  iron  ores  of  Hungary  were 
mined  not  far  from  the  famous  Trajan  road  and  the  Roman 
colonies  lying  near  thereto."  Great  antiquity  is  also  claimed 
for  the  iron  industry  of  that  vast  country  which  was  known 
to  the  Romans  as  Sarmatia,  but  is  now  known  as  Russia  in 
Europe.  The  nomadic  Scythians  would  doubtless  carry  the 
art  of  ironmaking  to  the  Ural  mountains,  where  iron  ore  was 
and  still  is  abundant.  One  of  the  Greek  poets  calls  Scythia 
"  the  mother  of  iron,"  Scythia  comprising  the  countries  lying 
north,  east,  and  south  of  the  Caspian  sea. 

The  Phoenicians  founded  colonies  in  France   and  Spain 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  19 

prior  to  the  sixth  century  before  Christ.  They  had  settle- 
ments on  the  Garonne  and  Rhone  in  Southern  Gaul.  The 
ancient  city  of  Massilia,  now  Marseilles,  is  supposed  to  occupy 
the  site  of  a  Phoenician  trading-post  which  fell  into  the  pos- 
session of  the  Phoceean  Greeks  about  the  period  above  men- 
tioned, who  gave  to  it  great  commercial  and  manufacturing 
importance.  The  Greeks  planted  other  colonies  in  Southern 
France.  The  city  of  Tartessus,  or  Tarshisji,  is  supposed  to 
have  been  one  of  the  Phoenician  settlements  in  the  south 
of  Spain  ;  the  city  of  Gades,  or  Cadiz,  was  another.  Tartes- 
sus stood  between  the  two  arms  of  the  Guadalquivir ;  but  in 
the  time  of  Strabo,  who  died  about  the  year  25  of  the  Chris- 
tian era,  it  had  ceased  to  exist.  Gades  was  its  near  neighbor 
and  still  exists.  The  Phoenicians  may  have  introduced  the 
manufacture  of  iron  among  the  native  inhabitants  of  France 
and  Spain ;  the  Celtiberians  of  the  latter  country  were  cer- 
tainly active  in  the  mining  and  working  of  metals  several 
hundred  years  before  the  Christian  era,  and  maintained  an 
extensive  trade  in  metals  with  Tyre  and  Carthage. 

Under  Grecian  influence,  which  succeeded  that  of  the 
Phoenicians  in  Spain,  the  Celtiberians,  who  inhabited  the  cen- 
tral and  northeastern  parts  of"  the  country,  continued  to  make 
iron,  and  to  this  was  joined  the  manufacture  of  steel.  The 
famous  forges  of  Aragon  and  Catalonia  were  active  during 
the  Grecian  occupation  of  Spain.  The  Carthaginians  for 
a  brief  time  succeeded  the  Greeks  in  Spain,  and  about  two 
centuries  before  the  Christian  era  the  Romans  succeeded  the 
Carthaginians.  The  Romans  greatly  extended  the  arts  of 
their  advanced  civilization  among  the  native  inhabitants  of 
Spain.  They  gave  special  encouragement  to  the  manufacture 
of  iron  and  steel,  although  in  justice  to  the  Celtiberians  it 
must  be  said  that  their  metallurgical  skill  was  at  least  equal 
to  that  of  the  Romans.  Polybius,  a  Greek  historian  who 
flourished  in  the  second  century  before  Christ,  says  that  the 
helmet  and  armor  of  the  Roman  soldier  were  of  bronze,-  but 
that  the  sword  was  a  cut-and-thrust  blade  of  Spanish  steel. 
At  the  battle  of  Cannae,  in  the  year  216  before  Christ,  the 
Romans  had  learned  from  the  Carthaginians  at  very  great 
cost  the  value  of  the  Spanish  sword. 

Livy  has  recorded  the  fines  which  were  imposed  by  Cato 


20  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

the  Censor  on  the  Celtiberian  iron  works  in  the  year  194 
before  Christ,  after  the  Roman  war  with  Spain.  About  the 
time  these  fines  were  imposed  the  town  of  Bilbilis,  near  the 
present  Moorish-built  town  of  Calatayud,  in  Aragon,  and  the 
little  river  Salo  were  celebrated  as  the  centre  of  the  iron  dis- 
trict of  Celtiberia.  The  water  of  the  Salo  was  supposed  to 
possess  special  qualities  for  tempering  steel.  The  same  ex- 
cellence was  attributed  to  some  other  streams  in  Spain  and 
other  ironmaking  countries.  Diodorus  speaks  of  the  excellent 
two-edged  swords,  "  exactly  tempered  with  steel,"  and  of  other 
arms  which  the  Celtiberians  in  Aragon  manufactured  from 
rods  of  iron  which  had  been  rusted  in  the  ground  "  to  eat 
out  all  the  weaker  particles  of  the  metal,  and  leave  only  the 
strongest  and  purest."  He  says  that  the  swords  which  were 
manufactured  from  these  rods  "  are  so  keen  that  there  is  no 
helmet  or  shield  which  can  not  be  cut  through  by  them." 
Plutarch,  who  died  about  the  year  140  of  the  Christian  era, 
gives  the  same  account  of  the  Celtiberian  method  of  purify- 
ing iron.  Pliny  speaks  of  the  excellent  iron  of  Bilbilis  and 
Turiasso,  the  latter  a  town  in  Tarragona,  and  of  an  extensive 
mountain  of  iron  upon  the  coast  of  Biscay,  probably  Somor- 
rostro.  Iron  ore  from  the  coast' of  Biscay  and  other  parts  of 
Spain  is  now  exported  in  large  quantities  to  Great  Britain, 
Germany,  the  United  States,  and  other  countries. 

Toledo  has  been  famous  since  the  Roman  occupation  of 
Spain  for  its  manufacture  of  steel  swords,  but  this  industry 
existed  at  Toledo  before  the  appearance  of  the  Romans.  The 
town  was  captured  by  them  in  the  year  192  before  Christ. 
The  Roman  army  from  that  time  forward  was  provided  with 
steel  swords  from  Toledo  and  other  places  in  Spain.  The 
manufacture  of  Toledo  blades  probably  attained  its  greatest 
development  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries.  A  cer- 
tain degree  of  mystery  has  always  surrounded  the  manufac- 
ture of  these  swords,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  manu- 
facture in  ancient  times  of  the  equally  celebrated  Damascus 
blades. 

The  manufacture  of  swords  at  Toledo  still  continues  in  a 
restricted  way.  A  recent  traveler,  describing  the  ruined  con- 
dition of  the  ancient  city,  refers  as  follows  to  the  building  in 
which  the  famous  blades  were  once  forged  in  such  great  num- 


IRON   IN   ALL    A^ES.  21 

bers  :  "  A  few  artisans  still  work  there  for  the  Spanish  army, 
but  they  do  very  little  beyond  turning  out  a  few  weapons 
for  show." 

The  iron  industry  of  Spain  was  the  first  in  the  world  for 
hundreds  of  years  after  the  Romans  obtained  a  foothold  in 
the  country,  surviving  the  downfall  of  the  Roman  power  in 
the  Peninsula  in  the  fifth  century  after  Christ  and  flourish- 
ing under  the  subsequent  rule  of  the  Visigoths.  This  distinc- 
tion was  strengthened  when  the  Moors  became  masters  of  the 
greater  part  of  Spain  in  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  century 
of  the  Christian  era.  They  stimulated  the  further  develop- 
ment of  the  iron  manufacture  in  the  districts  subject  to  their 
sway.  At  the  same  time  the  native  inhabitants  who  had  suc- 
cessfully resisted  the  Moorish  arms  continued  to  push  their 
small  Catalan  forges  still  farther  into  the  Pyrenees  and  along 
the  coast  of  Biscay,  lighting  up  the  forests  in  every  direction. 
So  prominent  did  the  iron  industry  of  Spain  become  that  its 
ironworkers  were  sought  for  by  other  countries,  and  on  the 
French  side  of  the  Pyrenees,  and  in  the  mountains  of  Ger- 
many, and  along  the  Rhine  they  set  up  many  of  their  small 
forges.  The  Catalan  forge,  which  received  its  name  from 
Catalonia,  has  been  introduced  into  every  civilized  country  of 
modern  times  which  produces  iron,  and  it  still  exists  in  al- 
most its  original  simplicity  in  the  mountains  of  both  Spain 
and  France  and  in  the  Southern  States  of  our  own  country. 
Spain  continued  to  make  large  quantities  of  iron  and  steel  of 
the  best  qualities  down  to  the  closing  years  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  its  iron  and  steel  industries  began  to  decline 
in  consequence  of  the  greater  enterprise  of  other  countries 
and  their  adoption  of  modern  methods  of  manufacture.  Ger- 
many and  England  had  previously  surpassed  Spain  in  the 
quantity  but  not  in  the  quality  of  the  iron  and  steel  they 
respectively  produced. 

The  Basque  provinces,  in  the  northeastern  part  of  Spain 
and  in  the  extreme  southwestern  part  of  France,  on  the  coast 
of  Biscay,  possessed  an  extensive  iron  industry  from  the  days 
of  the  Romans  until  the  period  mentioned  at  the  close  of  the 
last  paragraph.  In.  the  fourteenth  century  Bilbao  (pronounced 
Bilbo)  became  a  centre  of  this  industry,  which  included  the 
making  of  swords  of  unsurpassed  quality,  like  those  of  Tole- 


22  THE    MANUFACTURE    OP 

do.  Shakespeare  frequently  refers  to  the  "  bilbo,"  a  Spanish 
sword,  which  derived  its  name  from  Bilbao.  In  the  Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor,  act  1,  scene  1,  Pistol  says  to  Falstaff :  "  Sir 
John  and  master  mine,  I  combat  challenge  of  this  latten  bil- 
bo." In  act  3,  scene  5,  Falstaff  says  to  Ford :  "  I  suffered  the 
pangs  of  three  several  deaths  :  ....  to  be  compassed, 
like  a  good  bilbo,  in  the  circumference  of  a  peck,  hilt  to 
point,  heel  to  head,"  a  comparison  which  shows  the  great 
flexibility  of  the  Spanish  sword.  In  Hamlet,  act  5,  scene  2, 
iron  fetters  called  "  bilboes  "  are  mentioned  by  Hamlet  in  ad- 
dressing Horatio,  although  their  mention  in  Hamlet  may  be  an 
anachronism.  Sir  Walter  Scott  also  refers  to  the  swords  of 
Bilbao.  In  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel  we  read  as  follows : 

His  Bilboa  blade,  by  Marchmen  felt, 
Hung  in  a  broad  and  studded  belt; 
Hence,  in  rude  phrase,  the  Borderers  still 
Called  noble  Howard  "Belted  Will." 

A  French  writer,  M.  Alexandre  Pourcel,  has  recently  pre- 
pared with  great  care  a  most  interesting  and  valuable  account 
of  the  iron  industry  of  the  Basque  provinces.  He  quotes  first 
the  statement  by  Pliny :  "  On  the  coast  of  Cantabria  washed 
by  the  ocean  a  high  mountain  rises  precipitously,  which,  in- 
credible as  it  may  appear,  is  nothing  but  an  immense  block 
of  iron  ore,"  which,  he  says,  evidently  refers  to  the  mountain 
of  Triano,  (or  Somorrostro,)  in  the  Spanish  province  of  Bis- 
cay, and  then  adds : 

Oral  tradition  remained  almost  the  sole  depository  of  the  history  of 
the  Basque  country  up  to  a  comparatively  recent  period  ;  and  the  ar- 
chives do  not  go  back  beyond  the  early  years  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
The  historians  who  wrote  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  re- 
late that  from  the  tenth  century  the  incomparable  vena  dulce  was  shipped 
on  the  river  of  Bilbao,  the  Nerba  or  Nervion,  and  transported  to  the  dif- 
ferent ports  of  the  province  of  Guipuzcoa,  to  San  Sebastian,  Pasajes,  and 
even  to  Saint-Jean-de-Luz,  Cape  Breton,  or  Bayonne.  At  the  same  period 
thg  Biscayans  exported  to  France,  the  Netherlands,  and  England  their  iron, 
which  had  already  be'come  celebrated,  and  which  they  extracted  from  the 
vena  dulce. 

M.  Pourcel  next  refers  to  a  description  of  the  Catalan 
process,  written  by  Don  Pedro  de  Medine  in  1595,  and  says : 

According  to  this  author  there  were  at  that  period  in  Biscay  and 
Guipuzcoa,  where  the  Somorrostro  ore  was  sent,  300  ferrerias,  each  of 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  23 

which  produced  about  1,000  cwt.  of  iron  and  steel  per  annum,  a  total  of 
about  300,000  cwt.,  (quintals,)  or  rather  less  than  15,000  tons,  of  which  a 
third  was  immediately  disposed  of  in  these  two  provinces  for  naval  con- 
struction ;  another  third  was  turned  into  fire-arms,  tools  of  every  descrip- 
tion, nails,  and  agricultural  implements ;  while  the  remainder  was  export- 
ed in  the  form  of  bars.  According  to  Father  Gabriel  de  Henao,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  there  were  more  than  80  reducing 
hearths  in  Biscay,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  following  century,  in  1658, 
he  counted  himself  as  many  as  107  fires,  producing  iron  in  large  lumps, 
and  70  working  at  finishing  processes.  The  finished  products  of  every 
description  exceeded  100,000  cwt.,  (quintals,)  about  4,900  tons.  It  was  dur- 
ing the  eighteenth  century  that  the  iron  industry  of  the  Basque  country 
reached  its  apogee  with  a  production  in  certain  years  of  more  than  12,000 
tons  in  Biscay  alone.  At  that  time  this  province  had  245  hearths  in 
operation.  The  one  description  of  ore  which  was  smelted  in  the  ferrerias 
of  the  Basque  country  and  the  neighboring  provinces  was  the  vena  dulce, 
a  red  hematite,  almost  free  from  gangue,  soft  and  sticky  to  the  touch,  and 
easily  cut  with  a  tool. 

The  works  celebrated  for  forgings  were  situated  in  Guipuzcoa.  Don 
Jeronimo  Ustariz,  Royal  Secretary  for  the  Indies,  in  a  memoir  drawn  up 
by  order  of  Philip  V.,  in  1724,  with  reference  to  the  state  of  commerce 
and  naval  affairs,  mentions  the  forges  of  Placencia,  in  Guipuzcoa,  distant 
three  leagues  from  the  sea,  as  being  capable  of  furnishing  all  the  arms 
that  the  fleet  might  require,  and  all  the  iron  work  for  shipping  purposes, 
such  as  anchors,  etc.  In  1748,  in  a  report  on  the  artillery,  presented  to 
Ferdinand  VI.,  the  Marquis  de  la  Ensenada,  a  celebrated  statesman,  ex- 
presses himself  in  the  following  terms :  "  Whereas  the  iron  of  Cantabria 
is  the  very  best  obtainable,  it  follows  naturally  that  arms,  such  as  muskets, 
pistols,  carbines,  etc.,  made  with  this  iron,  must  be  of  the  best  quality. 
It  is  therefore  of  importance  that  the  manufactories  of  Guipuzcoa,  which 
make  a  specialty  of  this  class  of  work,  should  be  called  into  requisition 
for  supplying  Spain  and  America  with  this  material."  Towards  the  end 
of  the  century,  in  1785,  Guipuzcoa  possessed  eighteen  manufactories  of 
ships'  anchors.  These  works  supplied  not  only  the  state  arsenals  but  ex- 
ported their  manufactures  to  France  and  England.  Just  about  the  same 
time  we  find  from  the  official  reports  furnished  to  the  seigniory  of  Biscay 
that  there  were  154  ferrerias  in  full  work  in  this  province,  producing  7,300 
tons  of  iron  annually.  From  that  time  the  ancient  iron  industry  of  Bis- 
cay has  been  constantly  declining. 

We  have  quoted  liberally  from  M.  Pourcel's  account  be- 
cause of  its  great  historic  value.  '  We  are  pleased  to  be  able 
to  supplement  these  details  with  the  general  statement  that 
during  recent  years  the  iron  industry  of  Spain  is  being  re- 
vived through  the  introduction  at  Bilbao  and  elsewhere  of 
modern  processes  of  manufacture,  to  which  its  rich  ores  are 
so  admirably  adapted. 

France  did  not  at  an  early  period  in  its  history  make  the 


24  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

same  progress  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  that  has  been  re- 
corded of  Spain,  partly  because  it  did  not  receive  the  same 
outside  attention  which  made  Spain  a  centre  successively  of 
Phoenician,  Grecian,  Carthaginian,  Roman,  Gothic,  and  Moor- 
ish civilization,  but  partly  also  because  it  did  not  possess  as 
rich  iron  ores  as  those  of  Spain.  It  may  be  said,  however, 
that  iron  weapons  were  well  known  to  the  Gauls  who  con- 
fronted the  Romans  hundreds  of  years  before  the  Christian 
era  and  to  their  successors  who  opposed  the  armies  of  Julius 
Caesar,  who  frequently  refers  to  their  use  of  iron.  In  speak- 
ing of  the  Veneti,  who  inhabited  the  southern  part  of  Britta- 
ny, which  forms  the  northwestern  part  of  France,  he  makes 
the  remarkable  statement  that  the  anchors  for  their  ships 
were  fastened  to  them  with  iron  chains  instead  of  cables.  He 
also  says  that  the  benches  of  the  ships  were  fastened  with  iron 
spikes  of  the  thickness  of  a  man's  thumb.  This  circumstan- 
tial account  denotes  great  familiarity  with  the  use  of  iron 
by  the  Veneti.  In  describing  the  siege  of  Avaricum,  the 
modern  Bourges,  a  fortified  town  of  the  Bituriges,  Csesar  says 
that  "  there  are  in  their  territories  extensive  iron  mines,  and 
consequently  every  description  of  mining  operations  is  known 
and  practiced  by  them."  We  have  already  referred  to  the 
existence  of  an  early  iron  industry  in  the  French  part  of  the 
Basque  provinces. 

For  hundreds  of  years  after  Caesar's  time  only  faint  glimp- 
ses are  furnished  us  of  an  iron  industry  in  France.  During 
this  period  it  was  doubtless  wholly  confined  to  Catalan  forges. 
In  the  remains  of  a  celebrated  bridge  erected  by  Charlemagne 
over  the  Rhine,  at  Mayence,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighth 
century,  .and  which  have  but  recently  been  removed,  iron  in  a 
good  state  of  preservation,  "  being  covered  by  only  a  thin  layer 
of  rust,"  has  been  found  riveted  to  the  wood-work.  Stilckofen, 
or  high  bloomaries,  were  in  use  in  Alsatia  and  Burgundy  in 
the  tenth  century.  When  William  the  Norman  invaded  Eng- 
land in  1066  he  was  accompanied  by  many  smiths  who  were 
armorers  and  horse-shoers,  and  were  therefore  skilled  workers 
-in  iron.  The  modern  blast  furnace  is  supposed  to  have  origi- 
nated in  the  Rhine  provinces  about  the  beginning  of  the  four- 
teenth century,  but  whether  in  France,  Germany,  or  Belgium 
is  not  clear.  A  hundred  years  later,  in  1409,  there  was  a  blast 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  25 

furnace  in  the  valley  of  Massevaux  in  France,  and  it  is  claim- 
ed by  Landrin  that  there  were  many  blast  furnaces  in  France 
about  1450. 

Iron  was  made  by  the  Belgse  as  early  as  the  time  of  Julius 
Caesar,  and  possibly  at  an  earlier  date.  Heaps  of  iron  cinder, 
which  antiquarians  decide  to  be  as  old  at  least  as  the  Roman 
occupation  of  Gallia  Belgica,  have  recently  been  found  on 
the  tops  of  iron-ore  hillocks  in  the  provinces  of  Brabant  and 
Antwerp,  and  in  these  cinder  heaps  have  been  discovered 
flint  arrow-heads  and  fragments  of  coarse  pottery,  character- 
istic of  the  earliest  dawn  of  civilization.  During  the  Roman 
occupation  iron  was  produced  in  many  places,  a  fact  which  is 
attested  by  heaps  of  cinder  or  slag  which  yet  exist  and  are 
found  in  association  with  Roman  relics.  It  has  been  suppos- 
ed that  the  iron  which  was  made  in  Belgium  at  this  period 
was  produced  in  low  bloomaries  without  an  artificial  blast. 
It  is,  perhaps,  a  more  reasonable  supposition  that  the  Romans 
found  this  primitive  method  in  use  among  the  Belgians,  and 
that  they  introduced  an  artificial  blast  by  means  of  a  leather 
bellows. 

We  do  not  again  hear  of  the  Belgian  iron  industry  until 
the  tenth  century,  when  high  bloomaries,  or  wolf  furnaces, 
likewise  known  as  stuckofen,  were  in  operation  in  the  valley  of 
the  Meuse.  "We  are  informed  by  M.  Julien  Deby,  in  a  paper 
on  the  iron  and  steel  industries  of  Belgium,  that  "  iron  was 
made  to  perfection  in  the  Netherlands"  in  the  twelfth  cent- 
ury. In  the  fourteenth  century  high  furnaces,  or  flussofen, 
were  in  existence  in  Belgium.  In  1340  a  furnace  of  this 
kind  was  built  at  Marche  les  Dames,  near  Namur,  to  which 
special  privileges  were  granted  in  1345  by  William,  count  of 
Namur.  Fraiiquoy  refers  to  documentary  evidence  that  there 
were  hauls  fourneaux,  or  blast  furnaces,  at  Vennes  and  Griveg- 
nee,  near  Liege,  in  Belgium,  before  1400.  All  these  furnaces, 
except  the  wolf  furnaces,  were  true  blast  furnaces,  producing 
cast  iron.  In  1560  there  were  in  operation  in  the  province 
of  Namur,  according  to  Karsten,  35  blast  furnaces  and  85 
forges.  In  1613  permission  was  granted  to  two  armorers  of 
Maastricht  to  convert  iron  into  steel,  probably  cemented  steel. 
The  celebrated  .  works  of  the  John  Cockerill  Company,  at 
Seraing,  near  Liege,  were  not  established  until  1817. 


26  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Near  Saarbriicken,  in  Prussia,  where  the  first  battle  be- 
tween the  French  and  the  Germans  occurred  in  the  war  of 
1870,  iron  is  said  to  have  been  made  in  the  days  of  Roman 
ascendency,  but  the  Germans  do  not  appear  during  this  pe- 
riod to  have  been  as  familiar  with  its  manufacture  as  some 
of  their  neighbors.  Tacitus  informs  us  that  "  iron  does  not 
abound  in  Germany,  if  we  may  judge  from  the  weapons  in 
general  use.  Swords  and  large  lances  are  seldom  seen.  The 
soldier  grasps  his  javelin,  or,  as  it  is  called  in  their  language, 
his  /ram,  an  instrument  tipped  with  a  short  and  narrow  piece 
of  iron,  sharply  pointed,  and  so  commodious  that,  as  occasion 
requires,  he  can  manage  it  in  close  engagement  or  in  distant 
combat."  He  further  says  that  the  use  of  iron  was  unknown 
to  the  .ZEstyans,  who  inhabited  the  northern  part  of  Germany 
lying  upon  the  Baltic ;  "  their  general  weapon  was  the  club." 
The  Gothinians  are  described  by  Tacitus  as  a  people  who 
"  submit  to  the  drudgery  of  digging  iron  in  mines "  for  the 
Quadi,  who  were  their  neighbors.  Ernest,  the  German  editor 
of  Tacitus,  says  that  the  Gothinians  had  iron  of  their  own, 
and  did  not  make  use  of  it  to  assert  their  liberty.  Tacitus 
wrote  his  Treatise  on  Germany  near  the  close  of  the  first  cent- 
ury of  the  Christian  era.  Polybius  states  that  the  Teutons 
and  the  Cimbri,  from  Northwestern  Germany,  who  invaded 
Italy  and  Gaul  near  the  close  of  the  second  century  before 
the  Christian  era,  "were  already  familiar  with  iron,  and  pos- 
sessed weapons  of  that  metal." 

From  this  time  forward  the  condition  of  the  German  iron 
industry  is  enveloped  in  obscurity  until  the  eighth  century, 
when  we  hear  of  iron  works,  probably  wolf  furnaces,  or  stuck- 
qfen,  in  the  district  of  the  river  Lahn,  in  Nassau,  where  iron 
of  great  celebrity  was  made  by  a  guild  of  "forest  smiths"  in 
780.  We  are  informed  by  Maw  and  Dredge,  in  their  very  full 
report  on  the  iron  exhibits  at  the  Vienna  Exhibition  of  1873, 
that  "  they  had  their  special  privileges,  kept  an  iron  mart  at 
Wetzlar,  and  sent  their  products  regularly  to  the  great  annual 
fairs  at  Frankfort-on-the-Main.  This  iron  industry  was  es- 
pecially flourishing  during  the  thirteenth,  fourteenth,  and  fif- 
teenth centuries."  During  the  eighth  century  we  hear  also  of 
the  iron  industry  of  the  principality  of  Siegen.  There  was  a 
steel  forge  at  the  town  of  Siegen  in  1288  which  had  been  in 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  27 

existence  before  the  eleventh  century.  The  iron  industry  of 
this  principality  was  very  active  during  the  middle  ages. 

About  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  stuckofen  were 
in  use  in  Siegen.  Percy,  in  his  Metallurgy  of  Iron  and  Steel, 
says  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century  pig  iron 
was  made  in  Siegen  in  blauofen.  Iron  was  made  in  Saxony 
as  early  as  the  eighth  century.  Alexander,  in  his  Report  on 
the  Manufacture  of  Iron,  made  to  the  Governor  of  Maryland  in 
1840,  informs  us  that  the  flussofen  was  introduced  into  Sax- 
ony in  1550,  and  that  the  wooden  bellows  was  invented  about 
this  time  by  Hans  Lobsinger,  an  organist  of  Nuremberg. 

Iron  was  made  in  the  Hartz  mountains  in  the  eighth 
century.  Wolf  furnaces  and  ore  bloomaries  were  in  existence 
in  the  Thuringian  mountains  in  the  tenth  century,  and  blast 
furnaces  in  the  fourteenth  century.  Alexander  states  that  in 
the  latter  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  there  was  a  furnace 
in  these  mountains  which  was  24  feet  high  and  6  feet  wide 
at  the  boshes,  built  by  Hanssien,  a  Voigtlander. 

Solingen,  in  Rhenish  Prussia,  was  celebrated  as  early  as 
the  twelfth  ce'htury  for  its  swords  and  other  cutting  instru- 
ments. Swords  of  superior  quality  are  still  made  in  large 
quantities  at  the  same  place.  In  1377  cast-iron  guns  were 
made  near  Erfurt,  in  Thuringia.  In  the  fifteenth  century 
pots,  plates,  cannon-balls,  and  other  articles  of  iron,  many  of 
them  of  great  artistic  excellence,  were  cast  at  the  celebrated 
Ilsenberg  foundry  in  Germany,  which  is  still  in  existence. 
Stoves  are  said  to  have  been  cast  in  Alsace  in  1490.  As  early 
as  1509  they  were  cast  at  Ilsenberg. 

The  celebrated  steel  works  of  Fried.  Krupp,  at  Essen,  in 
Germany,  were  founded  in  1815  by  Friedrich  Nicolai  and 
Friedrich  Krupp,  under  the  firm  name  of  Nicolai  &  Krupp, 
for  the  purpose  of  making  cast  steel.  The  partnership  was 
soon  dissolved,  and  the  business  was  afterwards  successfully 
conducted  by  Herr  Krupp,  who  died  on  October  8, 1826,  aged 
about  39  years.  After  his  death  the  works  were  at  first  oper- 
ated by  his  .wife,  Therese  Krupp,  and  his  oldest  son,  Alfred 
Krupp,  the  son  subsequently  assuming  entire  control.  Alfred 
Krupp  died  on  July  14, 1887,  at  the  age  of  75  years.  He  was 
born  on  April  12,  1812.  The  works  are  now  in  the  hands  of 
his  son,  Friedrich  Alfred  Krupp,  grandson  of  the  founder. 


28  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Holland  does  not  appear  to  have  ever  had  an  iron  indus- 
try, and  the  same  remark  may  be  made  of  Denmark,  neither 
country  producing  iron  ore.  Iron  and  steel  made  elsewhere 
have,  however,  been  manufactured  in  small  quantities  into 
various  minor  products  in  both  countries.  David  Mushet 
quotes  M.  Verlit  as  authority  for  the  statement  that  cast  iron 
was  known  in  Holland  in  the  thirteenth  century,  and  that 
stoves  were  cast  from  it  at  Elass  in  the  year  1400. 

Switzerland  has  undoubtedly  made  iron  in  small  quanti- 
ties from  remote  ages.  It  now  has  a  few  small  blast  furnaces 
and  rolling  mills,  and  in  the  manufacture  of  cutlery  and  ma- 
chinery it  is  very  active.  The  lake  dwellers  of  Switzerland, 
who  lived  before  the  Christian  era,  possessed  wrought-iron 
swords  of  wonderful  workmanship  ;  also  other  iron  weapons 
and  implements.  See  Harper's  Magazine  for  February,  1890, 
for  a  brief  account  of  the  lake  dwellers. 

Recurring  to  the  iron  industry  of  Austria,  Alexander  says 
that  the  mines  of  Styria  were  "  opened  again  "  in  712.  It  ap- 
pears probable  that  wolf  furnaces  were  in  use  in  Styria,  Ca- 
rinthia,  and  Carniola  as  early  as  the  eighth  fcentury,  which 
seems  to  be  the  epoch  of  their  introduction  in  most  Euro- 
pean countries.  These  provinces  became  very  prominent  in 
subsequent  centuries  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  and  steel  in 
Catalan  forges.  The  first  blast  furnace  in  the  Alps  provinces 
was,  however,  introduced  very  much  later  than  in  Belgium  or 
on  the  .Rhine,  the  first  in  Carinthia  being  built  in  1567,  at 
Urtl ;  the  first  in  Styria  in  1760,  at  Eisenerz ;  and  the  first  in 
Carniola  in  the  early  part  of  the  present  century.  Iron  was 
made  in  Bohemia  and  Silesia  at  an  early  period.  "  The  Bo- 
hemian chronicler,  Hajek,  of  Liboschan,  mentions  that  iron 
works  existed  in  677,  near  Schasslau."  Heaps  of  cinder  and 
remains  of  wolf  furnaces  and  ore  bloomaries  are  numerous 
in  Bohemia.  In  1365  bloomaries  were  in  use  in  Upper  Sile- 
sia. Kerpely  says  that  written  descriptions  are  extant  of  the 
working  of  iron  mines  in  Upper  Hungary  in  1326  and  1408. 
Iron  slag  has  been  discovered  in  Hungary  at  a  depth  of 
about  one  foot  below  the  surface  of  the  ground  and  in  the 
midst  of  beautiful  vineyards.  It  is  probable  that  iron  had 
been  continuously  made  in  Hungary  and  in  various  Austrian 
provinces  in  the  period  intervening  between  the  dates  above 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  29 

mentioned   and   the   early   operations   in  Noricum,  Moravia, 
and  Hungary  which  have  already  been  referred  to. 

The  iron  industry  of  Sweden  had  an  existence  as  early 
at  least  as  the^  thirteenth  century.  A  Swedish  historian  says 
that  the  oldest  iron  mine  in  Sweden  is  probably  Norberg,  in 
Westmanland,  on  the  southern  borders  of  Dalecarlia.  There 
are  documents  still  in  existence,  dated  July  29,  1303,  signed 
by  Thorkel  Knutson,  the  royal  marshal,  in  which  Norberg 
is  mentioned  as  an  iron  mine.  Exclusive  privileges  were 
granted  to  the  miners  of  Norberg  by  King  Magnus  Ericsson 
in  1354.  It  is  probable,  however,  that  the  manufacture  of 
iron  in  botji  Sweden  and  Norway  antedates  the  time  of  the 
vikings  in  the  eighth  and  ninth  centuries  of  the  Christian 
era,  as  the  remains  of  their  vessels  which  have  been  discov- 
ered have  been  found  to  contain  iron.  It  may  also  be  said 
that,  as  iron  was  made  in  other  European  countries  before 
this  period,  there  is  no  good  reason  to  doubt  that  it  was  also 
made  in  Sweden  and  Norway.  At  Taplow,  on  the  Thames, 
in  England,  not  far  from  Windsor  Castle,  the  tomb  of  a  Norse 
viking  of  undoubted  identity  was  opened  in  1883,  and  in  it 
were  found,  among  other  articles,  a  rusted  iron  sword  which 
fell  into  pieces  when  removed,  an  iron  knife,  the  iron  socket 
of  a  spear,  an  iron  ring  strengthening  the  inside  of  a  bronze 
shield,  and  another  iron  ring  strengthening  the  bottom  of  a 
bronze  bucket.  Still  more  recently  there  has  been  discovered 
at  Gloppen,  on  the  coast  of  Norway,  a  burial  chamber  12  feet 
in  length,  formed  of  stone  slabs,  containing  the  remains  of  a 
man,  two  lance-heads  of  iron  12  inches  long,  an  iron  shield, 
some  Roman  gold  coins  perforated  and  worn  as  ornaments, 
some  iron  arrow-heads,  and  many  bronze,  glass,  and  other  ar- 
ticles, all  denoting  a  very  early  origin.  In  the  valley  of  Val- 
ders,  in  South  Norway,  a  sword,  a  spear,  and  an  armlet  have 
recently  been  found,  the  sword  and  spear  being  of  iron  and 
the  armlet  of  bronze.  On  a  farm  in  Tromso  sound,  close 
to  the  North  cape,  the  skeleton  of  a  tall  man  was  recently 
plowed  up,  and  by  its  side  lay  an  iron  sword,  a  short  and  a 
long  iron  spear,  three  iron  arrow-heads,  the  blade  of  a  scythe, 
a  small  iron  rod,  and  other  articles.  In  East  Gothia,  in  Swe- 
den, an  oval-shaped  stone  grave  has  been  discovered,  contain- 
ing a  skeleton,  beside  which  were  a  sword,  two  spear-heads, 


30  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

and  the  remains  of  a  shield  and  a  helmet,  all  of  iron.  All 
these  Swedish  and  Norwegian  relics  are  of  undoubted  pre- 
historic origin. 

In  1889  Paul  B.  Du  Chaillu  published  in  two  volumes  The 
Viking  Age,  in  which  he  incorporates  many  evidences  of  the 
existence  of  an  advanced  iron  industry  among  the  Norsemen 
in  the  early  centuries  of  the  Christian  era.  His  circumstan- 
tial statements  are  very  interesting  and  very  valuable. 

In  1488  the  celebrated  mines  of  Dannemora,  in  Sweden, 
were  opened.  The  celebrated  cannon  factory  at  Finspong 
"  received  its  first  privileges  "  in  1587,  and  the  Akers  cannon 
factory,  now  abolished,  dates  from  1584.  In  1614  Gustavus 
Adolphus  promoted  the  immigration  of  German  furnacemen 
into  Sweden.  The  Walloon  refining  process,  which  takes  its 
name  from  the  Walloons,  of  Flanders,  was  introduced  into 
Sweden  from  Flanders  in  the  time  of  Charles  the  Twelfth, 
who  reigned  from  1697  to  1718.  Percy  states  that  the  os- 
mund  furnace,  which  was  a  modification  of  the  stuckofen,  was 
formerly  very  common  in  Sweden.  Overman,  in  his  Manu- 
facture of  Iron,  says  that  this  furnace  was  introduced  into 
Sweden  from  Germany.  We  have  proof  of  its  existence  in 
Finland  as  late  in  the  present  century  as  1873.  A  stuekofen 
was  in  operation  in  the  province  of  Jemtland,  in  Sweden,  as 
late  as  1830.  We  have  a  record  of  the  exportation  of  2,200 
tons  of  malleable  iron  from  Sweden  in  1559. 

The  iron  industry  of  Russia  dates  historically  from  1569, 
in  which  year,  as  recorded  by  Scrivenor,  in  his  History  of 
the  Iron  Trade,  published  in  1841,  the  English  "obtained  the 
privilege  of  seeking  for  and  smelting  iron  ore,  on  condition 
that  they  should  teach  the  Russians  the  art  of  working  this 
metal."  The  first  historical  iron  works  in  Russia,  however, 
were  established  long  afterwards,  according  to  the  same  au- 
thor, in  the  reign  of  the  czar  Alexy  Michaelovitch,  (1645  to 
1676,)  about  sixty  miles  from  Moscow,  and  were  by  Scrivenor 
said  to  be  the  only  works  in  Russia  prior  to  the  reign  of  Pe- 
ter the  Great,  who  is  reported  to  have  worked  in  them  before 
he  set  out,  in  1697,  on  his  first  journey  into  foreign  countries. 

It  is  not  known  when  the  celebrated  Russia  sheet  iron 
was  first  made.  It  is  not  mentioned  in  a  circumstantial 
enumeration  of  the  iron  manufactures  of  Russia  about  1798, 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  31 

to  be  found  in  Scrivenor.  It  is  produced  to-day  on  both 
sides  of  the  Ural  mountains,  but  chiefly  on  the  Siberian  side. 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  Russians  were  skilled 
ironworkers  and  metallurgists  long  before  the  period  which 
is  mentioned  by  Scrivenor.  The  bells  of  Moscow  (not  made 
of  iron,  however,)  have  been  famous  for  hundreds  of  years. 
Scrivenor  himself  refers  to  "the  old  ruinous  iron  works"  at 
Olonetz,  which  he  says  were  "restored"  by  Henning,  a  for- 
eigner in  the  service  of  Peter  the  Great,  about  the  year  1700. 
Herr  Pechar,  of  Teplitz,  in  Bohemia,  wrote  in  1878:  "Min- 
ing operations  have  been  carried  on  in  the  Caucasus,  Ural, 
Altai,  and  the  Kirghise  desert  in  the  most  remote  ages.  This 
is  proved  by  the  number  of  abandoned  workings  discovered 
by  the  Russians  when  they  took  possession  of  these  districts. 
These  conquerors,  however,  did  not  commence  their  working 
before  the  fifteenth  century,  from  which  time  there  was  again 
a  lapse  of  three  hundred  years  before  order  and  progress  were 
firmly  established  by  new  mining  legislation  issued  by  Peter 
the  Great,  in  1719." 

We  have  before  us  an  account  of  a  Journey  from  St.  Pe- 
tersburg to  Pekin,  undertaken  in  1719  and  completed  in  1722, 
in  which  account  there  is  a  reference  to  the  iron  industry 
of  Siberia  which  points  to  its  origin  as  early  at  least  as  the 
preceding  century.  We  quote  as  follows : 

I  can  not  leave  Solikamsky  without  mentioning  the  rich  iron  mines  in 
the  country  adjacent,  at  Kathenaburg,  and  other  places  of  that  district, 
which  produce  iron  equal  perhaps  in  quality  to  the  best  in  the  world. 
These  works  have  of  late  been  brought  to  great  perfection  by  the  skill  and 
indefatigable  industry  of  Mr.  Demidof,  a  native  of  Russia,  enabled  and  en- 
couraged to  carry  them  on  by  a  beneficial  grant  from  his  majesty,  who  is 
always  ready  to  assist  and  protect  those  who,  by  their  ingenuity,  form  proj- 
ects to  the  advantage  of  his  country.  These  works,  I  am  informed,  are 
still  capable  of  great  improvement.  The  ore  is  very  good,  and  rises  in  many 
places  to  the  very  surface  of  the  earth,  and  may  be  dug  at  a  small  expense. 
As  for  wood  to  smelt  it,  no  place  in  the  world  can  have  greater  advantage. 
Besides,  all  the  machines  may  be  driven  by  water,  and  there  is  an  easy 
communication  by  the  rivers  to  St.  Petersburg  for  exportation,  and  to  many 
other  parts  of  Russia  for  inland  consumption.  In  these  mines  are  often 
found  magnets  of  various  sizes.  I  have  seen  some  of  them  very  large  and 
of  high  virtue.  There  are  several  other  iron  works  in  Russia ;  for  instance, 
at  Tula,  Olonitz,  and  other  places ;  but  the  metal  is  of  an  inferior  quality 
to  that  of  Siberia. 

The  narrative  from  which  the  above  extract  is  taken  was 


32  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

written  by  Dr.  John  Bell,  a  Scotch  physician,  who  accompa- 
nied Peter  the  Great's  embassy  to  Persia  in  1715,  1716,  1717, 
and  1718,  and  subsequently  accompanied  Peter's  embassy  to 
China  in  1719,  1720,  and  1721.  For  a  biographical  sketch  of 
Dr.  Bell  see  Appleton's  American  Cyclopcedia. 

In  an  English  pamphlet  on  the  British  iron  trade,  printed 
between  1725  and  1731,  and  to  be  found  in  the  Journal  of  the 
Iron  and  Steel  Institute  for  1885,  the  competition  of  Russian 
and  especially  of  Siberian  iron  in  British  markets  is  freely 
commented  upon.  Bar  iron  only  is  referred  to.  It  is  scarce- 
ly possible  that  Siberian  bar  iron  could  have  been  made  of 
such  good  quality  that  it  would  compete  with  other  iron  in 
British  markets  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century 
if  its  manufacture  in  that  remote  region  had  been  under- 
taken so  recently  as  the  preceding  century.  It  is,  we  think,  a 
far  more  reasonable  theory  that  the  knowledge  of  the  manu- 
facture of  iron  was  carried  by  the  iron  making  Parthians  and 
Scythians  into  the  Ural  mountains  before  the  Christian  era, 
and  that  it  was  never  lost  by  their  successors,  although  new 
life  was  infused  into  the  industry  by  Peter  the  Great. 

Tacitus  mentions  the  Finns  (Fenni)  in  his  Treatise  on 
Germany.  He  says  of  them. :  "  The  Finns  are  extremely  wild, 
and  live  in  abject  poverty.  They  have  no  arms,  no  horses,  no 
dwellings ;  they  live  on  herbs,  they  clothe  themselves  in  skins, 
and  they  sleep  on  the  ground.  Their  only  resources  are  their 
arrows,  which  for  the  lack  of  iron  are  tipped  with  bone."  A 
circumstantial  enumeration  of  the  iron  industries  of  Finland 
in  1873  mentions  22  blast  furnaces  and  69  miscellaneous 
wrought-iron  works,  including  "  10  bloomaries  or  ancient  fur- 
naces, of  a  construction  somewhat  similar  to  the  Catalan  fur- 
nace, in  which  the  iron  ore  is  reduced  directly  to  a  mass  of 
wrought  iron,  which  is  taken  out  of  the  bottom  and  front  of 
the  furnace  and  worked  under  hammers."  These  were  os- 
mund  furnaces.  Lake  ores  are  chiefly  used  in  the  Finnish 
iron  industry. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  33 

CHAPTER   III. 
BEGINNING  OF  THE   BRITISH  IRON   INDUSTRY. 

THE  use  of  iron  in  a  very  limited  way  was  known  to  the 
Britons  before  the  invasion  of  England  by  Julius  Caesar  in 
the  year  55  before  Christ.  The  Phoenicians,  who  traded  with 
the  Britons  probably  as  early  as  the  seventh  century  before 
Christ,  may  be  supposed  to  have  introduced  among  this  bar- 
barous people  the  use  of  iron,  but  we  have  no  proof  that  they 
instructed  them  in  its  manufacture.  The  Phoenicians  visited 
the  Cassiterides  (the  Scilly  Islands  and  Cornwall)  to  obtain 
tin.  Herodotus  speaks  of  obtaining  tin  from  the  Cassiterides 
in  his  day,  the  fifth  century  before  the  Christian  era.  The 
Greeks  and  Carthaginians  succeeded  the  Phoenicians  in  trad- 
ing with  the  Britons,  but  there  is  no  proof  that  they  taught 
them  the  art  of  making  iron.  They,  as  well  as  the  Phoeni- 
cians, probably  took  iron  into  Britain  in  exchange  for  tin  and 
other  native  products.  Caesar,  in  his  Commentaries,  says  of  the 
Britons  who  opposed  his  occupation  of  the  island  that  "  they 
use  either  brass  or  iron  rings,  determined  at  a  certain  weight, 
as  their  money.  Tin  is  produced  in  the  midland  regions ; 
in  the  maritime,  iron ;  but  the  quantity  of  it  is  small :  they 
employ  brass,  which  is  imported."  This  quotation  appears 
to  establish  the  fact  that  iron  was  a  precious  metal  in  Britain 
at  the  time  of  the  invasion ;  it  would  at  least  seem  to  show 
that  it  was  not  in  common  use  and  could  not  have  been  used 
as  an  article  of  export.  Caesar  nowhere  mentions  the  use  of 
iron  weapons  of  war  by  the  Britons.  The  Belgae  had  passed 
over  into  Britain  before  Caesar's  time  and  made  settlements 
upon  its  coast,  and  whatever  arts  they  possessed  they  would  of 
course  take  with  them.  It  can  not  be  proved  that  the  Belgae 
made  iron  in  their  own  country  before  Caesar's  invasion  of 
it ;  if  it  could  be  shown  that  they  did  it  might  safely  be  as- 
sumed that  they  would  introduce'  their  methods  of  manufac- 
ture mto*Britain.  Caesar  says' that  a  small  quantity  of  iron 
was  made  in  the  maritime  regions  of  the  island,  and  this 
the  Belgae  may  have  made.  _ 


34  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

/  If  the  manufacture  of  iron  by  the  Britons  prior  to  the 
Roman  invasion  is  enveloped  in  obscurity  and  even  in  doubt, 
there  can  be  110  doubt  that  iron  was  made  in  considerable 
quantities  during  the  Roman  occupation  of  Britain,  which 
nominally  extended  from  about  the  middle  of  the  first  cent- 
ury of  the  Christian  era  to  the  year  411.  The  Romans,  it 
may  here  be  remarked,  knowing  the  value  of  iron,  encour- 
aged its  manufacture  wherever  their  arms  were  borne  and 
the  necessary  conditions  existed.  The  remains  of  iron  works 
which  were  in  existence  and  were  operated  during  their  stay 
in  Britain  are  still  pointed  out.  Dismissing  all  speculation 
concerning  the  origin  of  the  first  iron  works  in  Britain,  the 
remains  of  some  of  these  works  may  well  receive  attention. 
They  relate  to  a  most  interesting  period  in  the  history  of  the 
British  iron  trade. 

Large  heaps  of  iron  scoria,  or  cinder,  as  old  as  the  Roman 
era,  have  been  discovered  in  the  wealds  of  Kent  and  Sussex, 
in  the  hills  of  Somerset,  and  in  the  Forest  of  Dean  in  Glou- 
cester ;  also  at  Bierley,  a  few  miles  from  Bradford  in  York- 
shire, and  in  the  neighborhood  of  Leeds  in  the  same  county. 
On  the  moors  in  the  parishes  of  Lanch ester  and  Chester-le- 
Street  in  the  county  of  Durham  vast  heaps  of  iron  scoria  of 
presumed  Roman  origin  have  been  found  ;  also  in  the  val- 
leys of  the  Reed  and  the  Tyne  in  the  county  of  Northum- 
berland. There  is  also  evidence  that  iron  was  made  under 
the  Romans  in  the  counties  of  Surrey,  Glamorgan,  Mon- 
mouth,  Hereford,  and  Worcester.  Mr.  Robert  Hunt,  in  his 
history  of  British  Mining,  says  :  "  We  may  trace  the  Romans 
from  the  wild  country  of  the  Forest  of  Dean,  and  the  beau- 
tiful Wye  scenery  in  the  south,  through  the  hills  of  Shrop- 
shire and  Montgomeryshire,  Cheshire,  and  the  counties  of 
Flint  and  Denbigh,  and  through  the  ancient  country  of  the 
Cangi,  or  Kiangi,  up  to  the  shores  of  the  Irish  Channel." 
He  also  says  that  iron  was  made  by  the  Romans  in  Derby- 
shire, Yorkshire,  Cumberland,  and  other  counties. 

Many  of  the  places  and  counties  named  above  as  having 
produced  iron  lie  in  the  southeastern  or  southwestern  parts  of 
England,  or  within  the  ancient  boundaries  of  South  Wales, 
"  the  country  of  the  Silures."  Next  to  Cornwall,  where  tin 
was  obtained  by  the  Phoenicians  and  their  successors,  these 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  35 

southern  portions  of  the  country  would  be  most  likely  to  be 
visited  and  influenced  by  foreigners  before  the  Roman  inva- 
sion, and  to  receive  the  most  attention  after  it.  Csesar  de- 
scribes the  island  of  Britain  as  being  shaped  like  a  triangle, 
with  one  of  its  sides  looking  toward  Gaul.  "  One  angle  of 
this  side  is  in  Kent,  whither  almost  all  ships  from  Gaul  are 
directed." 

The  cinder  above  mentioned  has  almost  invariably  been 
found  in  connection  with  Roman  coins,  pottery,  and  altars. 
A  coin  of  Antoninus  Pius,  who  lived  in  the  second  century 
after  Christ,  was  found  in  the  Forest  of  Dean  in  1762,  to- 
gether with  a  piece  of  fine  pottery.  Coins  of  other  Roman 
emperors  have  been  found  in  the  cinder  heaps  of  the  For- 
est of  Dean.  In  the  cinder  beds  of  Beauport,  between  Hast- 
ings and  Battle,  in  Sussex,  a  bronze  coin  of  Trajan  has  been 
found,  and  one  of  Adrian.  These  emperors  lived  in  the  first 
and  second  centuries  after  Christ.  Coins  found  in  the  cinder 
•heaps  of  Maresfield,  not  far  from  Uckfield,  have  dates  rang- 
ing from  Nero  to  Diocletian,  or  from  the  year  54  to  the  year 
286  after  Christ.  In  the  cinder  mounds  of  Sussex  many 
specimens  of  Roman  pottery  have  been  discovered.  Altars 
erected  to  Jupiter  Dolichenus,  the  protector  of  Roman  iron 
works,  have  been  discovered  in  various  places  in  England  in 
association  with  the  remains  of  prehistoric  iron  works. 

In  M.  A.  Lower's  Contributions  to  Literature  will  be  found 
an  interesting  account  of  the  discovery  of  Roman  relics  in 
1844,  by  Rev.  Edward  Turner,  in  the  cinder  beds  of  the  par- 
ish of  Maresfield  in  Sussex.  This  is  followed  by  Lower  with 
other  proofs  of  the  manufacture  of  iron  in  Sussex  by  the 
Romans.  Recent  researches  by  James  Rock,  of  Hastings,  in 
Sussex,  throw  additional  light  on  the  Roman  and  early  Brit- 
ish methods  of  manufacturing  iron.  Cinder  beds,  or  cinder 
heaps,  were  once  very  numerous  in  East  Sussex,  and  many 
of  them  still  exist.  The  neighborhood  of  Hastings  appears 
to  have  been  a  great  centre  of  the  iron  industry^"  from  the 
earliest  times."  The  cinder  heaps  yet  remaining  are  large 
enough  to  be  quarried,  and  contain  thousands  of  tons  of  sco- 
ria, some  of  the  heaps  having  large  oak  trees  growing  upon 
their  summits. 

Much  of  the  cinder  has  been  found  on  the  tops  of  hills 


36  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

or  mounds,  a  circumstance  which  justifies  the  belief  that  bel- 
lows were  not  employed  in  producing  a  blast,  but  that  the 
wind  was  relied  upon  to  produce  a  draft  sufficient  to  smelt 
the  ore  in  crude  bloomaries,  some  of  which  were  mere  exca- 
vations, with  covered  channels  leading  to  the  hillside  in  the 
direction  of  the  prevailing  winds.  This  primitive  method 
of  making  iron  is  that  which  appears  to  have  prevailed  in 
Belgica  at  the  same  time.  Bloomaries  of  similar  form  and 
adaptation  wrere  in  use  in  Derbyshire  for  smelting  lead  as  late 
as  the  seventeenth  century.  Scrivenor  mentions  that  similar 
furnaces  were  used  by  the  Peruvians  to  smelt  the  silver  ore 
of  their  country  before  the  arrival  of  the  Spaniards.  Other 
bloomaries  in  Britain  are  supposed  by  Fairbairn  and  other 
writers  to  have  been  simple  conical  structures,  with  small 
openings  below  for  the -admission  of  air,  and  erected  on  high 
ground  that  the  wind  might  assist  combustion.  A  still  sim- 
pler method  is  supposed  to  have  consisted  in  placing  ore  and 
wood  or  charcoal  in  alternate  layers  in  elevated  positions,  or* 
even  in  the  lowlands.  All  these  were  wasteful  methods.  The 
cinder  found  in  England  and  Wales  was  very  rich  in  iron  ;  in 
the  Forest  of  Dean  it  was  so  rich  and  so  abundant  that  in 
the  sixteenth  century  about  twenty  small  blast  furnaces  were 
engaged  in  smelting  it. 

It  was  stated  in  1681  by  Andrew  Yarranton,  in  the  second 
part  of  England's  Improvements  by  Sea  and  Land,  that  <l  with- 
in 100  yards  of  the  walls  of  the  city  of  Worcester  there  was 
dug  up  one  of  the  hearths  of  the  Roman  foot-blasts,  it  being 
then  firm  and  in  order,  and  was  7  foot  deep  in  the  earth." 
The  foot-blast  here  referred  to  must  have  been  a  leather  bel- 
lows, with  which  the  Romans  and  their  Mediterranean  neigh- 
bors were  certainly  acquainted.  There  is  nothing  improbable 
in  the  conclusion  that  the  Romans  while  in  Britain  used  both 
.  the  wind-bloomaries  and  the  foot-blasts. 

The  emperor  Adrian  landed  in  Britain  in  the  year  120, 
and  in  the  following  year  there  was  established  at  Bath,  in 
Wiltshire,  a  Roman  military  forge,  or  fabrica,  for  the  nWiu- 
facture  of  iron  arms.  This  forge  w^s  close  to  the  bloomaries 
in  Somerset  and  the  Forest  of  Dean,'  from  which  it  was  sup- 
plied with  iron.  That  the  manufacture  of  iron  in  Britain  at 
this  time  and  for  some  time  subsequently  was  almost  wholly 


IRON    IN    ALL   AGES.  37 

confined  to  the  southern  parts  of  England  seems  probable 
from  a  passage  in  Herodian,  quoted  by  Smiles  in  his  Indus- 
trial Biography,  who  says  of  the  British  pursued  by  the  em- 
peror Severus,  in  the  year  208,  through  the  fens  and  marshes 
of  the  east  coast,  that  "  they  wore  iron  hoops  round  their 
middles  and  their  necks,  esteeming  them  as  ornaments  and 
tokens  of  riches,  in  like  manner  as  other  barbarous  people 
then  esteemed  ornaments  of  silver  and  gold." 

Percy  quotes  from  the  London  Times  an  account  of  the 
opening  of  some  prehistoric  remains  in  the  Cheviot  hills,  in 
the  north  of  England,  in  1861  and  1862,  which  revealed  va- 
rious evidences  of  the  rude  civilization  of  the  early  Celtic, 
or  British,  inhabitants,  including  pieces  of  iron  slag.  These 
remains  are  assigned  by  the  Times  to  the  Roman  period  of 
British  history,  but  they  may  belong  to  a  later  period. 

Strabo  mentions  the  exportation  of  iron  from  Britain 
in  his  day,  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era.  This  was 
before  the  Romans  had  subdued  the  Britons,  but  after  the 
influence  of  Roman  civilization  had  been  felt  in  the  island. 
During  the  Roman  occupation  of  Britain  iron  was  one  of  the 
products  of  the  country  which  were  regularly  exported. 

The  Anglo-Saxons,  who  succeeded  the  Romans  in  Britain 
in  the  early  part  of  the  fifth  century,  used  tools  and  weapons 
of  iron,  and  it  is  a  reasonable  supposition  that  they  pro- 
duced all  the  iron  that  was  required  for  their  manufacture  ; 
but  their  enterprise  as  iron  manufacturers  probably  extended 
no  further,  although  Bede,  who  is  the  earliest  English  his- 
torian, speaks  of  the  importance  of  the  iron  industry  in  his 
day,  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  century.  The  Anglo-Saxon 
monks  frequently  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  iron.  St. 
Dunstan,  who  lived  in  the  tenth  century,  is  said  to  have  had 
a  forge  in  his  bedroom,  and  to  have  been  a  skilled  black- 
smith and  metallurgist.  One  of  the  last  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
kings  was  Edmund  Ironside. 

During  the  ascendency  of  the  Danes,  and  afterwards  down 
to  the  accession  of  William  the  Conqueror  in  1066,  iron  was 
made  in  the  Forest  of  Dean  and  elsewhere,  but  in  limited 
quantities.  In  Doomsday-Book  mention  is  made  of  iron  works 
in  the  counties  of  Somerset,  Hereford,  Gloucester,  Cheshire, 
and  Lincoln,  but  no  mention  is  made  of  iron  works  in  Kent, 


38  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Surrey,  or  Sussex.  In  the  eleventh  century  the  Anglo-Saxon 
plow  consisted  of  a  wooden  wedge  covered  with  iron  straps, 
to  which  the  Normans  added  the  coulter.  The  shipbuilders 
of  Edward  the  Confessor,  the  last  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  kings 
prior  to  Harold  who  lost  the  battle  of  Hastings,  obtained 
supplies  of  bolts  and  bars  of  iron  from  the  city  of  Glouces- 
ter. The  antiquarian  Camden  says  that  "  in  and  before  the 
reign  of  William  the  Conqueror  the  chief  trade  of  the  city 
of  Gloucester  was  the  forging  of  iron ;  and  it  is  mentioned 
in  Doomsday-Book  that  there  was  scarcely  any  other  tribute 
required  from  that  city  by  the  king  than  certain  dicars  of 
iron  and  iron  bars  for  the  use  of  the  royal  navy.  The  quan- 
tity required  was  thirty-six  dicars  of  iron,  a  dicar  containing 
ten  bars  and  one  "hundred  iron  rods  for  nails  or  bolts."  Gi- 
raldis  Cambrensis,  who  lived  in  the  twelfth  century,  speaks 
of  "  the  noble  Forest  of  Dean,  by  which  Gloucester  was  am- 
ply supplied  with  iron  and  venison."  Nicholls,  in  The  Forest 
of  Dean,  says  that  in  the  time  of  Edward  the  First,  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  thirteenth  century,  the  Free  Miners  of  the 
Forest  "  applied  for  and  obtained  their  '  customes  and  fran- 
chises,' which  were  granted,  as  the  record  of  them  declares, 
'time  out  of  minde.'"  In  1282,  according  to  Nicholls,  there 
were  "  upwards  of  seventy-two  "  forgece  errantes,  or  movable 
forges,  in  the  Forest,  each  of  which  paid  a  license  of  seven 
shillings  a  year  to  the  crown. 

Scrivenor  says  that  during  the  period  from  the  Conquest 
to  the  death  of  John,  in  1216,  iron  and  steel  were  imported 
into  Britain  from  Germany  and  other  countries,  the  domestic 
supply  being  insufficient.  The  Normans,  however,  contribu- 
ted much  to  the  development  of  English  iron  and  other  re- 
sources. Green,  in  his  History  of  the  English  People,  says  that 
one  immediate  result  of  the  Conquest  was  a  great  immigra- 
tion into  England  from  the  Continent.  "A  peaceful  invasion 
of  the  industrial  and  trading  classes  of  Normandy  followed 
quick  on  the  conquest  of  the  Norman  soldiery."  In  1266  and 
subsequently  we  hear  of  iron  works  in  Sussex  which  were 
not  mentioned  in  Doomsday-Book.  In  the  year  1300  the  iron- 
mongers of  London  complained  to  the  Lord  Mayor  that  the 
smiths  of  the  weald  of  Sussex  brought  iron  for  wheels  that 
was  not  what  it  ought  to  have  been,  "  to  the  loss  of  the  wrhole 


IR'ON   IN    ALL    AGES.  39 

trade."  In  1321  three  thousand  horseshoes  and  twenty-nine 
thousand  nails  were  provided  by  Peter  de  Waltham,  sheriff 
of  Surrey  and  Sussex,  for  the  expedition  against  Bruce  in 
which  Edward  the  Second  attempted  to  retrieve  the  defeat 
at  Bannockburn. 

Still  the  English  iron  industry  made  very  slow  progress. 
Professor  James  E.  Thorold  Rogers,  in  his  Work  and  Wages, 
informs  us  that  during  the  reign  of  Edward  the  First  (1274 
to  1307)  the  most  valuable  articles  in  use  by  the  English 
peasants  were  copper  and  brass  pots  and  a  few  common  iron 
utensils,  all  metals  being  exceedingly  dear,  and  iron,  relatively 
speaking,  being  the  dearest  of  all.  The  iron  utensils  of  this 
period  were  all  made  of  hammered  iron.  It  is  mentioned  by 
Scrivenor  that  there  were  but  few  iron  mines  in  the  north  of 
England  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries,  and  that, 
in  the  tenth  year  of  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Second,  in  1317, 
iron  was  so  scarce  in  that  section  and  in  Scotland  that  the 
Scots,  "  in  a  predatory  expedition  which  they  made  in  that 
year,  met  with  no  iron  worth  their  notice  until  they  came  to 
Furness,  in  Lancashire,  where  they  seized  all  the  manufac- 
tured iron  they  could  find,  and  carried  it  off  with  the  greatest 
joy,  though  so  heavy  of  carriage,  and  preferred  it  to  all  other 
plunder."  The  Scots  at  this  time  were  in  great  need  of  iron, 
which  they  did  not  produce  in  large  quantities  in  their  small 
forges,  and  for  which  they  were  largely  dependent  on  the  Con- 
tinent and  on  the  favor  or  ill-fortune  of  England.  Alexander 
says  that  there  were  iron  works  at  Kimberworth,  in  York- 
shire, in  1160,  and  Smiles  gives  an  extract  from  a  contract 
for  supplying  wood  and  ore  for  iron  "  blomes "  at  Kirskill, 
near  Otley,  in  Yorkshire,  in  1352.  A  recent  writer,  Mr.  H.  A. 
Fletcher,  says  that  "  the  earliest  record  which  has  been  found 
of  iron-ore  mining  in  Cumberland  seems  to  be  the  grant  of 
the  forge  at  Winefel  to  the  monks  of  Holm  Cultram  Abbey, 
in  the  twelfth  century,  which  also  included  a  mine  at  Egre- 
mont,  by  inference  of  iron,  being  in  connection  with  a  forge ; 
and  Thomas  de  Multon  confirms  a  gift  to  the  same  abbey  de 
quartuor  duodenis  mince  ferri  in  Coupland."  The  Ulverston  dis- 
trict in  Lancashire  appears  to  have  been  a  seat  of  the  English 
iron  industry  as  early  as  the  twelfth  century. 

Scrivenor  mentions  one  art  related  to  the  manufacture  of 


40  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

iron  which  flourished  in  England  from  William  to  John  if 
the  manufacture  itself  did  not.  The  art  of  making  defensive 
armor  was  brought  to  such  perfection  -during  the  period  men- 
tioned that  "  a  knight  completely  armed  was  almost  invulner- 
able." The  history  of  the  crusades  shows  that  the  English 
were  then  very  proficient  in  the  manufacture  of  both  arms 
and  armor,  as  were  the  Turks  and  other  Asiatic  tribes  who 
resisted  them.  Smiles  says  that  it  was  the  knowledge  of  the 
art  of  forging  iron  which  laid  the  foundation  of  the  Turk- 
ish empire.  By  means  of  this  art  the  Turks  made  the  arms 
which  first  secured  their  own  freedom  and  then  enabled  them 
to  extend  their  power.  The  quality  of  the  swords  used  by 
the  English  and  by  their  Infidel  opponents  is  illustrated  by 
an  incident  related  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  the  Tales  of  the 
Crusaders.  He  describes  a  meeting  between  Richard  Coeur 
de  Lion  and  Saladin,  at  which  Saladin  asks  Richard  to  show 
him  the  strength  for  which  he  is  famous,  and  the  Norman 
monarch  responds  by  severing  a  bar  of  iron  which  lies  on 
the  floor  of  his  tent.  Saladin  says,  "  I  can  not  do  that,"  but 
he  takes  a  down  pillow  from  the  sofa,  and  drawing  his  keen 
blade  across  it  it  falls  in  two  pieces.  Richard  says,  "  This  is 
the  black  art ;  it  is  magic ;  it  is  the  devil ;  you  can  not  cut 
that  which  has  no  resistance."  Saladin,  to  show  him  that 
such  is  not  the  case,  takes  from  his  shoulders  a  scarf  which 
is  so  light  that  it  almost  floats  in  the  air,  and  tossing  it  up 
severs  it  before  it  can  descend.  Much  of  the  iron  which  the 
English  used  at  this  time  in  the  manufacture  of  arms  and 
armor  came  from  Spain. 

Edward  the  Third,  who  reigned  from  1327  to  1377,  did 
much  to  advance  the  manufacturing  industries  of  England. 
He  protected  domestic  manufactures  by  legislation  which  re- 
stricted the  importation  of  foreign  goods,  and  he  encouraged 
the  immigration  into  England  of  skilled  workmen  from  the 
Continent.  The  use  of  ^iron  was  greatly  extended  in  his  reign, 
and  its  manufacture  was  active  in  Kent  and  Sussex  and  in 
the  Forest  of  Dean.  Nevertheless  the  domestic  supply  did 
not  meet  the  wants  of  the  people.  Scrivenor  says  :  "  By  an 
act  passed  in  the  twenty-eighth  year  of  Edward  the  Third  no 
iron  manufactured  in  England,  and  also  no  iron  imported  and 
sold,  could  be  carried  out  of  the  country,  under  the  penalty 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  4.1 

of  forfeiting  double  the  quantity  to  the  king  ;  and  the  mag- 
istrates were  empowered  to  regulate  the  selling  price  and  to 
punish  those  who  sold  at  too  dear  a  rate,  according  to  the 
extent  of  the  transaction."  This  act  appears  to  have  remain- 
ed in  force  long  after  Edward's  death.  Smiles  quotes  from 
Parker's  English  Home  the  statement  that  in  the  reign  of  this 
king  the  pots,  spits,  and  frying-pan  of  the  royal  kitchen  were 
classed  among  the  king's  jewels. 

The  methods  of  manufacturing  iron  which  were  followed 
in  England  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  were 
all  of  a  slow  and  restricted  character,  although  very  greatly 
advanced  beyond  those  which  existed  in  the  days  of  the  Ro- 
mans. Cast  iron  in  all  forms  appears  to  have  been  still  un- 
known ;  all  iron  was  forged.  The  English  were  yet  mainly 
devoted  to  agriculture,  but  were  not  even  good  farmers,  their 
implements  of  husbandry  and  their  methods  of  cultivating 
the  soil  being  equally  rude.  Wool  was  their  great  staple, 
and  this  was  largely  exported  to  the  Continent,  where  it  was 
manufactured  into  finer  fabrics  than  the  English  were  capable 
of  producing.  Iron  was  often  scarce  and  dear,  because  the 
domestic  supply  was  insufficient.  The  iron  industry  on  the 
Continent  was  at  this  period  in  a  much  more  advanced  stage 
of  development  than  in  England,  and  most  of  the  Continent- 
al iron  was  also  of  a  better  quality  than  the  English  iron.  V* 

Professor  Rogers,  in  his  History  of  Agriculture  and  Prices 
in  England  and  in  his  Work  and  Wages,  gives  many  interest- 
ing details  concerning  the  iron  industry  of  England  in  the 
thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries.  Iron  was  made  at  this 
time  at  Tendale  in  Cumberland,  and  at  or  near  the  city  of 
Gloucester ;  also  in  Kent  and  Sussex.  It  was  doubtless  made 
in  many  other  places.  Steel  is  frequently  mentioned,  the  first 
reference  to  it  being  in  1267.  It  is  not  quite  clear  that  all 
the  steel  used  in  England  during  the  period  under  consider- 
ation was  imported,  but  most  of  it  certainly  was.  Much  of 
the  iron  used  was  imported,  frequent  mention  being  made 
of  Spanish  and  also  of  osemond  iron.  Osemond  steel  is  also 
frequently  mentioned.  In  1281  Norman  iron,  of  a  superior 
quality,  was  bought  for  the  Newgate  jail.  Spain  appears  to 
have  been  the  principal  source  of  the  supply  of  imported 
iron.  It  is  probable  that  the  osemond  iron  arid  steel  were 


42  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

chiefly  obtained  in  Sweden,  Norway,  and  Germany,  the  os- 
mund  furnace  having  been  in  use  in  these  countries  about 
this  time.  Iron  and  steel  were  generally  bought  at  fairs  and 
markets.  The  Spaniard  attended  the  Stourbridge  fair  with 
his  stock  of  iron,  and  iron  from  the  Sussex  forges  was  sold 
at  the  same  place.  The  prices  of  iron  and  steel  were  usually 
lower  near  the  sea  and  at  the  great  towns  in  the  south  of 
England  than  elsewhere.  Among  the  farmers  it  was  custom- 
ary for  the  bailiff  to  buy  the  iron  that  might  be  needed  on 
the  farm,  and  to  employ  a  smith  to  make  the  horseshoes  and 
nails  and  to  iron  the  implements.  Rogers  says  that  "  no  di- 
rect information  about  the  seasons,  scanty  as  it  is,  is  so  fre- 
quent as  that  found  in  the  notices  which  the  bailiff  gives  of 
the  great  cost  of  iron."  Iron  for  the  tires  of  wagons  and 
carts  was  so  dear  that  many  wheels  wTere  riot  ironed.  Steel 
appears  to  have  been  but  little  used  by  the  farmers. 

Iron  was  sold  in  various  forms.  The  iron  made  at  the 
works  at  Tendale  was  sold  in  the  form  of  blooms  in  1333 
and  subsequently.  Blooms  wrere  sold  as  early  as  1318,  but 
the  place  of  their  manufacture  is  not  given.  Slabs  and  bars 
of  iron  are  also  mentioned,  but  the  commonest  form  in  which 
iron  was  sold  was  the  "piece,"  twenty-five  pieces  making  a 
hundred-weight.  "  The  small  fagot  of  iron,  each  bar  of  which 
weighed  a  little  over  four  pounds,  was  kept  by  the  bailiff,  and 
served  as  occasion  required  for  the  various  uses  of  the  farm." 
The  Tendale  bloom  weighed  about  one  hundred  pounds,  and 
having  to  be  reworked  was  sold  at  a  much  lower  price  than 
other  forms  of  iron.  Steel  was  usually  sold  by  the  garb,  or 
sheaf,  each  sheaf  containing  thirty  small  pieces,  the  weight  of 
which  is  not  stated.  Rogers  supposes  that  the  pieces  of  iron 
and  steel  were  of  about  the  same  weight,  and  that  the  price 
of  steel  was  about  four  times  the  price  of  iron.  Occasional 
mention  is  made  of  steel  which  was  sold  by  the  cake ;  it  was 
"  a  little  higher  in  value  and  much  greater  in  weight  than 
the  garb."  Steel  made  in  the  forges  of  Styria  and  other  Aus- 
trian provinces  is  still  produced  in  the  form  of  a  large  cake. 

Plow-shoes,  which  appear  to  have  been  iron  points  to  wood- 
en shares,  are  of  frequent  occurrence  in  the  accounts  quoted 
by  Rogers,  and  so  are  lath  and  board  nails,  clouts  and  clout 
nails,  and  horseshoes  and  horseshoe  nails.  Horseshoes  were 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  43 

not  purchased  from  the  smiths  until  about  the  close  of  the 
fourteenth  century;  down  to  that  time  the  smiths  were  sup- 
plied by  the  bailiffs  with  the  iron  for  their  manufacture. 
"  Hinges,  staples,  and  bolts  were  occasionally  manufactured 
by  the  village  smith  from  iron  supplied  him  by  the  bailiff, 
but  were  more  frequently  bought  at  the  market-town  or  fair." 
Iron  mattocks  and  hoes  were  used  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
as  were  iron  sickles,  scythes,  and  hay  and  other  forks.  Iron 
teeth  for  harrows  were  unknown,  and  it  may  be  added  that 
they  were  not  much  used  in  England  until  the  seventeenth 
century.  Domestic  utensils  of  iron  were  not  in  general  use ; 
pots  and  similar  articles  used  in  the  kitchen  were  usually  of 
brass.  A  brass  jug  and  pan  are  mentioned  in  1272,  a  brass 
jug  and  basin  in  1360,  and  two  brass  pots  in  1383.  Such  iron 
utensils  as  were  in  use  appear  to  have  been  made  of  wrought 
iron.  Tinware  was  certainly  unknown.  Hammers,  axes,  pick- 
axes, and  other  tools  were  made  of  iron.  Iron  hoops  were 
used  for  buckets  and  grain  measures  in  the  fourteenth  cent- 
ury ;  "  the  iron-bound  bucket  that  hung  in  the  well "  had  an 
existence  as  early  at  least  as  1331. 

Other  authorities  mention  that  arrow-heads  Avere  manufac- 
tured at  Sheffield  in  the  thirteenth  century,  and  that  knives 
were  manufactured  at  the  same  place  in  the  fourteenth  cent- 
ury, as  they  are  to-day.  Chaucer,  who  wrote  his  Canterbury 
Tales  near  the  close  of  the  latter  century,  in  describing  the 
miller  of  Trompingtoii  says  that  "  a  Schefeld  thwytel  bar  he 
in  his  hose."  Birmingham  was  then,  as  it  is  now,  a  centre 
of  the  manufacture  of  swords,  tools,  and  nails. 

Smiles  pays  a  deserved  compliment  to  the  English  smith, 
to  whom  England  owes  so  much  of  its  greatness.  In.  Anglo- 
Saxon  times  his  person  was  protected  by  a  double  penalty, 
and  he  was  treated  as  an  officer  of  the  highest  rank.  The 
forging  of  swords  was  then  his  great  specialty.  William  the 
Conqueror  did  much  to  exalt  the  art  of  the  smith,  to  whom 
he  was  greatly  indebted  for  his  victory  at  Hastings,  his 
soldiers  being  better  armed  than  those  of  the  Saxon  Harold. 
At  the  close  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  smith  had  fairly 
entered  upon  the  brilliant  career  which  has  since  contributed 
so  much  to  the  industrial  pre-eminence  of  England.  Mr. 
Picton,  in  a  recent  address,  says  :  "  Iron  work  at  this  period 


44  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

was  of  the  most  elaborate  description.  The  locks  and  keys, 
the  hinges  and  bolts,  the  smith's  work  in  gates  and  screens, 
exceed  in  beauty  anything  of  the  kind  which  has  since  been 
produced."  In  a  lecture  before  the  Society  of  Arts  in  1883  • 
Mr.  George  H.  Birch  gives  a  pleasing  description  of  the  use- 
ful and  ornamental  treatment  of  iron  by  English  and  Conti- 
nental smiths  from  the  twelfth  to  the  seventeenth  century, 
dwelling  especially  upon  the  elaborate  and  beautiful  hinges, 
railings,  screens,  and  locks  that  are  still  preserved  in  ecclesi- 
astical and  other  structures  of  mediaeval  and  later  origin. 

In  the  fourteenth  century  cannon  were  used  in  England 
and  on  the  Continent,  although  Appleton's  Cyclopaedia  gives 
us  dates  of  their  earlier  use.  The  year-book  of  the  town  of 
Ghent,  in  Holland,  dated  1313,  says :  "  In  this  year  was  intro- 
duced the  use  of  guns  in  Germany  by  a  monk."  This  monk's 
name  was  Berthold  Schwartz.  A  statue  to  his  memory  was 
erected  at  Freiburg  in  1853.  France,  according  to  Scrivenor, 
appears  to  have  used  cannon  as  early  as  1338,  in  which  year 
it  is  stated  that  the  government  had  an  account  with  Henry 
de  Faumichan  "for  gunpowder  and  other  things  necessary 
for  the  cannon  at  the  siege  of  Puii  Guillaume."  Scrivenor 
says  that  "  in  the  year  1327  we  hear  of  cannon,  which  are  then 
supposed  to  have  been  first  used  in  England  by  Edward  the 
Third  in  his  invasion  of  Scotland."  An  English  writer,  Mr. 
C.-D.  Archibald,  is  said  by  Lower  to  have  presented  strong 
reasons  for  the  belief  that  cannon  were  used  by  Edward  in 
his  expedition  against  the  Scots  in  the  year  mentioned.  Eng- 
land made  prominent  use  of  cannon  in  field  warfare  at  the 
battle  of  Cressy  and  the  siege  of  Calais  in  the  year  1346, 
when  the  bowmen  of  Edward  the  Third  were  drawn  up  "in 
the  form  of  a  harrow,"  with  small  bombards  between  them, 
"  which,  with  fire,  threw  little  iron  balls  to  frighten  the 
horses."  These  bombards  were  made  of  "iron  bars  joined 
together  longitudinally,  and  strengthened  by  exterior  hoops  of 
iron."  But  the  archers  of  the  English  army  continued  to  be 
the  main  reliance  of  the  English  kings  for  many  years  after 
Edward's  first  use  of  the  bombards,  and  on  the  Continent 
gunpowder  did  not  come  into  general  use  until  the  sixteenth 
century.  At  the  battle  of  Pavia,  in  1525,  the  matchlock  was 
first  used  effectively,  and  it  was  then  fired  from  a  rest. 


f< 


IKON   IN   ALL   AGES.  45 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE  BRITISH  IRON  INDUSTRY  FROM  THE  FIFTEENTH 
TO  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY. 

DURING  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  the  manufac- 
ture of  iron  in  England  was  greatly  extended.  The  encour- 
agement which  Edward  the  Third  and  his  immediate  succes- 
sors had  given  to  the  immigration  of  foreign  workmen  into 
England  had  resulted  in  the  settlement  in  the  country  of 
many  Flemish  and  French  ironworkers,  whose  skill  was  ea- 
gerly sought  by  many  landed  proprietors  who  entered  with 
zeal  into  the  manufacture  of  iron.  Sussex  became  the  prin- 
cipal seat  of  this  industry ;  it  possessed  iron  ores  and  forests 
of  timber,  the  latter  supplying  the  necessary  charcoal  for  fuel, 
and  small  streams  furnished  the  requisite  power  to  drive  the 
iron  mills."  As  one  marked  result  of  the  extension  of  the 
iron  manufacture  in  England  at  this  time  the  dependence  of 
the  country  upon  foreign  sources  of  supply  was  greatly  les- 
sened, so  much  so  that  in  1483  an  act  was  passed  prohibiting 
the  importation  of  gridirons,  grates,  iron  wire,  knives,  hinges, 
scissors,  and  many  other  manufactured  articles  of  iron  or 
steel  which  competed  with  like  articles  of  domestic  produc- 
tion. Landrin,  however,  states  that  fine  tools  were  still  im- 
ported into  England  from  Bilbao,  in  Spain,  as  late  as  1548. 
As  early  as  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century  blast 
furnaces  were  introduced  into  England  from  the  Continent, 
and  this  event  gave  a  fresh  impetus  to  the  iron  industry  of 
Sussex,  Kent,  Surrey,  and  other  sections.  Prior  to  the  intro- 
duction of  blast  furnaces  all  iron  that  was  made  in  England 
was  produced  in  Catalan  forges  or  high  bloomaries  directly 
from  the  ore,  and  was,  therefore,  when  finished,  wrought,  or 
bar,  iron.  The  bloomaries  were  doubtless  modeled  after  the 
Continental  stuckofen ;  indeed  the  English  high  bloomary  was 
probably  the  exact  counterpart  of  the  stuckofen.  The  first 
blast  furnaces  introduced  into  England  were  also  probably  the 
same  in  all  respects  as  the  flussofen,  or  blauofen,  or  the  liaut 
fourneau,  of  the  Continent. 


46  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

The  exact  date  of  the  erection  of  the  first  blast  furnace 
in  England  is  unknown.  Lower,  in  his  account  of  the  iron 
industry  of  Sussex,  mentions  an  iron  casting  which  was  made 
in  the  fourteenth  century.  Mushet  supposes  that  iron  was 
cast  in  the  Forest  of  Dean  in  1540,  and  he  says  that  the  oldest 
piece  of  cast  iron  he  ever  saw  bore  the  initials  "  E.  R."  and 
the  date  "1555."  Lower  quotes  some  cast-iron  inscriptions 
in  Sussex  which  are  dated  1581,  1582,  and  1591.  But  even 
the  earliest  of  these  years  is  clearly  not  sufficiently  early  to 
be  accepted  as  marking  the  period  when  blast  furnaces  were 
introduced  into  England.  Camden,  who  lived  between  1551 
and  1623,  says  of  Sussex  :  "  Full  of  iron  mines  it  is  in  sundry 
places,  where,  for  the  making  and  founding  thereof,  there  be 
furnaces  on  every  side,  and  a  huge  deal  of  wood  is  yearly 
burnt."  He  also  says  that  the  heavy  forge-hammers,  which 
were  mostly  worked  by  water-power,  stored  in  hammer-ponds, 
beating  upon  the  iron,  "fill  the  neighborhood  round  about, 
day  and  night,  with  continual  noise."  In  1607  John  Norden 
stated  in  a  printed  document  that  "  there  are  or  lately  were  in 
Sussex  neere  140  hammers  and  furnaces  for  iron."  In  1612 
Simon  Sturtevant  said  that  there  were  then  in  England,  Scot- 
land, Ireland,  and  Wales  "  800  furnaces,  forges,  or  iron  mills" 
making  iron  with  charcoal,  of  which  Dud  Dudley,  a  few  years 
later,  estimated  that  about  300  were  furnaces,  the  weekly  prod- 
uct of  which  was  about  15  tons  each.  The  furnaces  would  be 
partly  employed  in  making  pots,  kettles,  mill  machinery,  and 
other  castings  direct  from  the  ore.  In  the  sixteenth  century, 
as  has  already  been  stated,  several  furnaces  were  built  in  the 
Forest  of  Dean  to  rework  the  cinder  which  was  found  there  in 
large  quantities.  The  first  furnaces  built  in  the  Forest  were 
15  feet  high  and  6  feet  wide  at  the  boshes.  The  furnaces  at 
work  in  the  Forest  in  1677  were  blown  with  bellows  20  feet 
long,  driven  by  "  a  great  wheel,"  turned  by  water. 

Lower  says  that  about  1557  "  several  Sussex  families,  en- 
riched by  the  iron  manufacture,  assumed  the  rank  of  gentry." 
Smiles  says  that  "the  iron  manufacture  of  Sussex  reached  its 
height  toward  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  when  the 
trade  became  so  prosperous  that,  instead  of  importing  iron, 
England  began  to  export  it  in  considerable  quantities  in  the 
shape  of  iron  ordnance."  This  ordnance  was  cast,  and  the 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  47 

time  referred  to  was  the  latter  part  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
Bronze  cannon  had  succeeded  the  bombards  about  the  begin- 
ning of  that  century,  and  as  early  as  1543  cast-iron  cannon 
were  made  in  Sussex,  at  a  place  called  Bucksteed,  by  Ralph 
Hogge,  who  employed  a  Frenchman  named  Peter  Baude  as 
his  assistant.  "  Many  great  guns  "  were  subsequently  cast  in 
Sussex,  John  Johnson  and  his  son,  Thomas  Johnson,  the 
former  a  servant  of  Peter  Baude,  being  prominent  in  their 
manufacture.  John  Johnson  is  said  to  have  "  succeeded  and 
exceeded  his  master  in  this  his  art  of  casting  ordnance,  mak- 
ing them  cleaner  and  to  better  perfection."  About  1595  the 
weight  of  some  of  the  cannon  cast  in  Sussex  amounted  to 
three  tons  each.  At  a  later  period,  in  1648,  Bishop  Wilkins 
says  in  his  Matliematicall  Magick  that  "  a  whole  cannon  weigh- 
ed commonly  8,000  pounds,  a  half  cannon  5,000,  a  culverin 
4,500,  a  demi-culverin  3,000.  A  whole  cannon  required  for 
every  charge  40*pounds  of  powder  and  a  bullet  of  64  pounds." 

But  a  still  greater  honor  is  claimed  for  Peter  Baude  than 
that  with  which  his  name  is  above  associated.  Stow,  in  his 
Chronicle,  quoted  by  Froude  and  Smiles,  says  that  two  foreign 
workmen,  whom  Henry  the 'Eighth  tempted  into  his  service, 
first  invented  shells.  "One  Peter  Baude,  a  Frenchman-born, 
and  another  alien  called  Peter  Van  Cullen,  a  gunsmith,  both 
the  king's  feed  men,  conferring  together,  devised  and  caused 
to  be  made  certain  mortar  pieces,  being  at  the  mouth  from 
11  inches  unto  19  inches  wide,  for  the  use  whereof  they  caus- 
ed to  be  made  certain  hollow  shot  of  cast  iron,  to  be  stuffed 
with  fire-work  or  wild-fire,  whereof  the  bigger  sort  for  the 
same  had  screws  of  iron  to  receive  a  match  to  carry  fire 
kindled,  that  the  fire-work  might  be  set  on  fire  for  to  break 
in  pieces  the  same  hollow  shot,  whereof  the  smallest  piece 
hitting  any  man  would  kill  or  spoil  him."  Lower  gives  the 
name  of  the  "  alien  "  above  referred  to  as  "  Peter  Van  Collet, 
a  Flemish  gunsmith." 

There  is  deposited  in  the  library  of  the  Historical  Society 
of  Pennsylvania,  at  Philadelphia,  a  stone  caDnon-ball,  one  of 
twenty-three  which  are  said  to  have  been  fired  at  the  boat  in 
which  Queen  Mary  and  Douglass  made  their  escape  from 
Loch  Leven  in  1568.  It  is  about  nine  inches  in  diameter,  is 
round,  but  not  smooth,  and  weighs  probably  fifteen  pounds. 


48  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

The  exportation  of  cast-iron  cannon  became  so  extensive 
that  complaint  was  made  that  Spain  armed  her  ships  with 
them  to  fight  the  ships  of  England,  and  the  trade  was  for  a 
time  prohibited.  But  their  manufacture  continued  on  a  large 
scale.  Hume  says  that  "  shipbuilding  and  the  founding  of 
iron  cannon  were  the  sole  manufactures  in  which  the  English 
excelled  in  James  the  First's  reign/'  from  1603  to  1625.  In 
1629  the  crown  ordered  600  cannon  to  be  cast  for  the  States 
of  Holland.  England,  however,  continued  to  import  from 
the  Continent,  but  particularly  from  Sweden,  Germany,  and 
Spain,  some  of  the  finer  qualities  of  iron  and  considerable 
quantities  of  steel. 

Before  1568  all  iron  wire  that  was  made  in  England  was 
"  drawn  by  main  strength  alone,"  according  to  Camden.  The 
Germans,  says  this  author,  then  introduced  into  the  Forest  of 
Dean  and  elsewhere  the  art  of  drawing  it  by  a  mill.  Pre- 
vious to  the  year  mentioned  the  larger  part  of  the  iron  wire 
and  ready-made  wool-cards  used  in  England  was  imported. 
Scrivenor  quotes  Williams's  History  of  Monmouthshire'  as  au- 
thority for  the  statement  that  the  iron  and  wire  works  near 
Tintern  Abbey  were  erected  by  Germans.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  iron  industry  of  England  in  the  fourteenth, 
fifteenth,  and  sixteenth  centuries  was  greatly  indebted  to  the 
inventive  genius  and  mechanical  skill  of  German,  Flemish, 
French,  and  other  emigrants  from  Continental  countries. 

Near  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century  there  was  intro- 
duced into  England  an  invention  for  slitting  flattened  bars  of 
iron  into  strips  called  nail-rods.  This  invention  was  the  slit- 
ting mill.  Scrivenor,  upon  the  authority  of  Gough's  Camden, 
states  that  Godfrey  Bochs,  of  Liege,  Belgium,  set  up  at  Dart- 
ford,  in  1590,  "the  first  iron  mill  for  slitting  bars."  Dart- 
ford  is  a  market  town  in  Kent.  Another  story  associates  the 
name  of  "  the  founder  of  the  Foley  family,  who  was  a  fiddler 
living  ne^ft1  Stourbridge,"  with  the  honor  of  introducing  the 
first  slitting  mill  into  England,  a  knowledge  of  which  he  sur- 
reptitiously gained  by  visiting  Swedish  iron  works  and  fid- 
dling for  the  workmen.  Percy  states  that  Richard  Foley,  the 
founder  of  the  Foley  family  at  Stourbridge,  who  was  first  a 
seller  of  nails  and  afterwards  a  forgemaster,  died  in  1657  at 
the  age  of  80  years.  In  1606  and  1618  patents  were  granted 


IRON   IN    ALL    AGES.  49 

.in  England  to  Sir  Davis  Buhner  and  Clement  Dawbeny,  re- 
spectively, for  cutting  iron  into  nail-rods  by  water-power. 

The  slitting  mill,  by  whomsoever  invented  and  perfected, 
greatly  benefited  the  nail  trade  of  England.  Birmingham  be- 
came the  centre  of  this  industry,  and  it  was  here,  probably, 
that  scantily-clad  and  poorly-paid  women  and  girls  were  first 
regularly  employed  in  England  in  the  manufacture  of  nails. 
Hutton,  who  is  quoted  by  Young  in  his  Labor  in  Europe  and 
America,  says  that  in  1741  they  were  thus  employed  in  the 
numerous  blacksmith  shops  of  Birmingham,  "  wielding  the 
hammer  with  all  the  grace  of  their  sex."  They  were  called 
"  nailers."  Women  and  children  are  still  employed  at  Bir- 
mingham and  its  vicinity  in  making  nails  and  chains,  and 
their  condition  is  usually  wretched  and  pitiable.  Machinery 
was  not  applied  to  the  manufacture  of  nails  in  any  country 
until  near  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Nail-cutting 
machinery  is  an  American  invention. 

Leland,  a  writer  in  the  time  of  Henry  the  Eighth,  (1509 
to  1547,)  refers  to  Birmingham  as  follows :  "  There  be  many 
smithes  in  the  towne  that  use  to  make  knives  and  all  man- 
ner of  cutting  tooles,  and  many  lorimers  (saddlers)  that  make 
bittes,  and  a  great  many  naylors ;  so  that  a  great  part  of  the 
towne  is  maintained  by  smithes,  whoe  have  their  iron  and 
sea-cole  out  of  Staffordshire."  He  also  says :  "  The  beauty 
of  Birmingham,  a  good  market  towne  in  the  extreame  parts 
of  Warwickshire,  is  one  street  going  up  alonge  almost  from 
the  left  ripe  of  the  brooke,  up  a  meane  hill  by  the  length 
of  a  quarter  of  a  mile.  I  saw  but  one  paroch  church  in  the 
towne."  Camden,  who  wrote  half  a  century  later,  describes 
Birmingham  as  "swarming  with  inhabitants  and  echoing 
with  the  noise  of  anvils." 

The  art  of  tinning  iron  was  first  practiced  in  Bohemia, 
and  in  1620  it  was  introduced  into  Saxony.  These  countries 
for  some  time  supplied  all  Europe  with  tin  plates.  The  dis- 
covery of  tin  in  Bohemia  is  said  by  Flower,  in  his  History 
of  the  Trade  in  Tin,  to  date  from  1240.  In  1681  Andrew  Yar- 
raiiton  asserted  that  tin  plates  were  then  made  in  England 
through  his  means,  he  having  learned  the  art  of  making 
them  in  Saxony  in  1665.  The  exact  date  of  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  manufacture  of  tin  plates  into  England  by  Yar- 


50  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

ranton  is  said  to  have  been  1670.  The  first  attempt  to  estab- 
lish the  new  industry  in  England  was  made  at  Poiitypool,  in 
Monmouthshire,  in  that  year,  but  it  was  not  successfully  es- 
tablished there  until  1720.  Scrivenor  states  that  in  1740  the 
art  "was  brought  to  considerable  perfection  in  England." 

But,  notwithstanding  the  progress  which  had  been  made 
in  the  development  of  the  English  iron  trade,  especially  in 
the  reigns  of  Henry  the  Eighth,  Elizabeth,  and  James  the 
First,  an  influence  was  at  work  which  was  destined  to  weigh 
heavily  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  upon  all  further  devel- 
opment. This  was  the  growing  scarcity  of  wood  for  the  use 
of  the  forges  and  furnaces,  mineral  fuel,  or  pit-coal,  not  yet 
having  come  into  use  as  a  substitute  for  wood  in  these  works. 
The  forests  of  England  in  the  ironmaking  districts  had  been 
largely  consumed  by  the  "  voragious  "  iron  works,  and  there 
were  loud  complaints  that  the  whole  community  would  be 
unable  to  obtain  fuel  for  domestic  purposes  if  this  denuda- 
tion were  persisted  in.  In  response  to  these  complaints  an 
act  was  passed  in  1558,  the  first  year  of  the  reign  of  Eliza- 
beth, which  prohibited  the  cutting  of  timber  in  certain  parts 
of  the  country  for  conversion  into  coal  or  fuel  "  for  the  mak- 
ing of  iron,"  special  exception  being  made  of  the  weald  of 
Kent,  the  county  of  Sussex,  and  certain  parishes  "high  in 
the  weald  of  the  county  of  Surrey."  In  1563  a  royal  decree 
was  issued  abolishing  the  "  bloomeries,"  or  "iron  smithies,"  in 
Furness  in  Lancashire,  in  compliance  with  a  petition  of  the 
inhabitants,  "  because  they  consumed  all  the  loppings  and 
croppings,  the  sole  winter  food  for  their  cattle."  In  1581  an 
act  to  prevent  the  destruction  of  timber  was  passed,  which 
set  forth  the  increasing  scarcity  of  timber  for  fuel  in  conse- 
quence of  "the  late  erection  of  sundry  iron  mills  in  divers 
places  not  far  distant  from  the  city  of  London  and  the  sub- 
urbs of  the  same,  or  from  the  downs  and  sea-coast  of  Sus- 
sex," and  provided  that  "  no  new  iron  works  should  be  erect- 
ed within  twenty-two  miles  of  London,  nor  within  fourteen 
miles  of  the  river  Thames,"  nor  in  certain  parts  of  Sussex 
near  the  sea ;  nor  should  any  wood  within  the  limits  de- 
scribed, with  certain  exceptions,  be  converted  "  to  coal  or 
other  fewel,  for  the  making  of  iron-metal  in  any  iron-mill, 
furnace,  or  hammer."  A  more  sweeping  act  was  passed  in 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  51 

1584,  which  prohibited  the  erection  of  any  new  iron  works 
in  Surrey,  Kent,  and  Sussex,  and  ordered  that  no  timber  one 
foot  square  at  the  stub  should  be  used  as  fuel  "  at  any  iron 
work."  It  is  said  that  these  restrictions  were  not  very  rig- 
idly enforced,  but  they  served  to  narrow  the  limits  within 
which  the  manufacture  of  iron  could  be  conducted,  although 
they  did  not  abridge  the  manufacture  itself.  Lower  says 
that,  in  the  early  part  of  the  reign  of  Charles  the  First,  who 
was  beheaded  in  1649,  "the  number  of  mills  and  furnaces 
had  increased  yearly,  in  spite  of  the  statutes  limiting  their 
extension,  and  the  waste  of  timber  was  again  brought  before 
the  notice  of  government."  This  increase,  however,  was  prob- 
ably in  districts  of  the  country  which  had  not  previously  been 
largely  devoted  to  the  manufacture  of  iron.  Dudley,  in  his 
Mettallwn  Martis,  says  that  about  1620  there  were  nearly  20,- 
000  smiths  of  all  sorts  within  ten  miles  of  Dudley  Castle,  in 
Staffordshire,  and  that  there  wTere  also  "many  iron  works  at 
that  time  within  that  circle  decayed  for  want  of  wrood  (yet 
formerly  a  mighty  woodland  country)." 

About  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  British 
iron  industry  experienced  a  serious  check  through  the  civil 
commotion  known  as  the  Cromwellian  Rebellion  which  then 
prevailed.  Many  of  the  forges  and  furnaces  in  Sussex  and 
in  the  south  of  Wales  were  destroyed,  and  they  were  not 
again  rebuilt.  Soon  after  the  Restoration  all  the  royal  iron 
works  in  the  Forest  of  Dean  wer£  destroyed,  owing  to  the 
scarcity  of  timber.  There  was  then  much  apprehension  felt 
lest  the  Forest  of  Dean  should  fail  to  supply  timber  for  the 
royal  navy.  Owing  to  the  scarcity  of  timber  many  of  the 
iron  works  in  Kent,  Sussex,  and  Surrey,  and  in  the  north  of 
England  were  "laid  down"  in  1676,  and  England's  supply 
of  iron  was  largely  derived  from  "  Sweadland,  Flanders,  and 
Spain." 

Notwithstanding  these  severe  checks  the  iron  industry  of 
England  bravely  refused  to  be  utterly  destroyed,  and  as  late 
as  1720  it  was  still  second  in  importance  to  the  manufacture 
of  woolen  goods.  In  1724  it  was  the  chief  industry  of  Sus- 
sex. In  1740,  however,  only  59  furnaces  were  left  in  all 
England  and  Wales,  and  their  total  production  was  but  17,- 
350  tons  of  pig  iron,  or  about  294  tons  for  each  furnace.  All 


52  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

these  furnaces  may  not  have  been  in  blast,  as  it  has  been 
stated  that,  ten  years  later,  in  1750,  each  of  the  charcoal  fur- 
naces of  Monmouthshire  produced  24  tons  of  iron  in  a  week. 
Ten  of  the  furnaces  existing  in  1740  were  in  Sussex,  but  in 
1788  only  two  of  these  were  left,  and  in  1796  only  one  is 
mentioned.  In  1740  there  were  10  charcoal  furnaces  in  the 
Forest  of  Dean.  Pig  iron  is  still  made  in  this  district,  but 
with  coke  as  fuel.  The  iron  industry  of  Kent,  Sussex,  and 
Surrey  is  now  extinct.  The  last  furnace  in  the  weald  of 
Sussex,  at  Ashburnham,  was  blown  out  in  1829. 

During  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  England 
imported  iron  largely  from  Sweden,  and  in  the  latter  century 
both  Russia  and  the  American  colonies  contributed  to  her 
supply.  The  scarcity  of  timber  for  fuel  for  blast  furnaces  in 
England  continuing,  a  proposition  was  made  in  the  British 
Parliament  in  1737  to  bring  all  pig  iron  from  the  British  col- 
onies in  America;  and  in  1750,  to  facilitate  the  importation 
of  pig  iron  from  these  colonies,  the  duty  which  had  previous- 
ly been  imposed  for  the  protection  of  British  pig-iron  manu- 
facturers was  repealed.  At  this  time  the  business  of  manu- 
facturing pig  iron  in  some  parts  of  Great  Britain  was  still 
conducted  upon  such  primitive  principles  that  both  charcoal 
and  iron  ore  were  carried  to  the  furnaces  of  Monmouthshire 
on  the  backs  of  horses. 

About  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  mineral  fuel 
in  the  form  of  coke  came  into  general  use  in  the  manufacture 
of  pig  iron  in  England,  and  the  iron  trade  of  that  country 
and  Wales  at  once  revived,  while  that  of  Scotland  may  be 
said  to  have  been  created  by  the  new  fuel.  As  early  as  the 
beginning  of  the  preceding  century  the  celebrated  and  unfort- 
unate Dud  Dudley  and  others  had  experimented  in  England 
in  the  manufacture  of  iron  with  coke,  but  the  first  contin- 
uous and  completely  successful  use  of  mineral  fuel  in  the 
blast  furnace  was  by  Abraham  Darby,  of  Shropshire,  at  his 
furnace  at  Coalbrookdale,  in  1735,  or  'possibly  a  year  or  two 
earlier.  This  coal  was  coked.  The  new  fuel  was  at  once  in- 
troduced at  other  furnaces  in  England.  Raw  coal  had  previ- 
ously been  used  in  refineries.  In  1740  a  coke  furnace  was 
built  at  Pontypool,  in  Monmouthshire.  In  1796  charcoal  fur- 
naces had  been  almost  entirely  abandoned  in  Great  Britain. 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  53 

Mr.  Robert  Hunt  thus  describes  the  early  attempts  that 
were  made  in  England  to  manufacture  iron  with  mineral  fuel. 

In  the  time  of  King  James  several  patents  for  the  manufacture  of  iron 
with  pit-coal  were  granted,  but  with  little  success,  till  Dud  Dudley,  in  1619, 
succeeded  in  making  coke  pig  iron  at  the  rate  of  three  tons  per  week.  Pre- 
viously, in  1612,  Simon  Sturtevant,  and,  in  1613,  Eavenzon,  made  experiments 
in  the  same  direction,  but  without  success.  During  the  Commonwealth  pat- 
ents were  also  granted,  in  one  of  which  Oliver  Cromwell  was  a  partner. 
Again,  in  1663,  Dud  Dudley  secured  his  last  patent,  setting  forth  that  at  one 
time  he  was  capable  of  producing  seven  tons  of  coke  pig  iron  each  week,  the 
furnace  being  twenty-seven  feet  square,  the  blast  impelled  by  bellows,  which 
one  man  could  work  for  an  hour  without  being  much  tired.  It  was  not,  how- 
ever, till  the  beginning  of  the  18th  century  that  the  successful  application  of 
coal,  previously  coked,  was  solved  by  Abraham  Darby,  of  the  Coalbrookdale 
iron  works,  Shropshire,  giving  a  new  and  greater  impetus  to  the  iron  indus- 
tries of  the  kingdom. 

The  manufacture  of  pig  iron  with  mineral  fuel  was  great- 
ly facilitated  by  the  invention  of  a  cylindrical  cast-iron  bel- 
lows by  John  Smeaton  in  1760,  to  take  the  place  of  wooden 
or  leather  bellows,  and  by  the  improvements  made  in  the 
steam  engine  by  James  Watt  about  1769,  both  these  valuable 
accessions  to  blast-furnace  machinery  being  used  for  the  first 
time,  through  the  influence  of  Dr.  Roebuck,  at  the  Carron 
iron  works  in  Scotland.  The  effect  of  their  introduction  was 
to  greatly  increase  the  blast  and  consequently  to  increase  the 
production  of  iron.  The  blast,  however,  continued  to  be  cold 
at  all  furnaces,  both  coke  and  charcoal,  and  so  remained  un- 
til 1828,  when  James  Beaumont  Neilson,  of  Scotland,  invented 
the  hot-blast,  which  is  now  in  general  use  in  Great  Britain 
and  other  ironmaking  countries. 

These  and  other  changes  in  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron 
were  accompanied  by  equally  important  improvements  in  the 
manufacture  of  wrought,  or  finished,  iron.  In  1783  Henry 
Cort,  of  Gosport,  England,  obtained  a  patent  for  rolling  iron 
into  bars  with  grooved  iron  rolls,  and  in  the  following  year 
he  obtained  a  patent  for  converting  pig  iron  into  malleable 
iron  by  means  of  a  puddling  furnace.  These  patents  did  not 
relate  to  entirely  new  inventions  in  the  -manufacture  of  iron 
but  to  important  improvements  on  existing  methods,  which 
had  not,  however,  been  generally  employed.  John  Payne  and 
Major  Hanbury .  rolled  sheet  iron  as  early  as  1728  at  Pon- 
typool,  and  patents  were  granted  for  grooved  rolls  to  other 


54  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Englishmen  before  Cort's  day.  From  Cort's  time  forward 
bituminous  coal  was  used  in  the  puddling  furnace  as  well  as 
in  the  blast  furnace,  but  in  its  raw  state.  To  the  important 
improvements  introduced  by  Cort  the  iron  trade  of  Great 
Britain  is  greatly  indebted.  The  refining  of  pig  iron  in  for- 
ges and  its  subsequent  conversion  into  bars  and  plates  under 
a  hammer  formed  the  only  general  method  of  producing  fin- 
ished iron  down  to  Cort's  day,  both  in  Great  Britain  and  on. 
the  Continent,  and  it  was  wholly  inadequate  to  the  produc- 
tion of  large  quantities  of  iron  of  this  character.  With  min- 
eral fuel,  powerful  blowing  engines,  the  puddling  furnace,  and 
grooved  "rolls  Great  Britain  rapidly  passed  to  the  front  of  all 
ironmaking  nations.  But  the  foundation  of  this  progress  was 
the  possession  of  mineral  fuel,  or  pit-coal,  of  superior  quality 
and  in  large  and  apparently  inexhaustible  quantities.  On  the 
Continent  at  this  time  the  pit-coal  which  had  been  developed 
was  supposed  to  be  unsuited  to  the  manufacture  of  iron.  Ow- 
ing to  this  belief  and  to  the  demoralization  of  all  industries 
caused  by  the  Napoleonic  wars  coke  pig  iron  was  not  made 
on  the  Continent  until  1826,  when  John  Cockerill  successfully 
introduced  the  use  of  coke  at  a  blast  furnace  at  Seraing. 

Steel  was  largely  made  in  England  as  early  as  1609,  and 
most  probably  in  cementation  furnaces,  the  product  being 
known  as  blister  steel  and  shear  steel.  The  manufacture  of 
steel  by  cementation  did  not,  however,  originate  in  England, 
but  on  the  Continent.  In  the  year  mentioned  John  Hawes 
held  the  site  of  the  Abbey  of  Robertsbridge  in  Sussex,  upon 
which  were  eight  steel  "  furnaces."  The  invention  of  crucible 
cast  steel  originated  with  Benjamin  Huntsman,  an  English 
clockmaker,  at  Sheffield,  in  1740,  and  not  only  Sheffield,  the 
principal  seat  of  its  manufacture  and  of  the  manufacture  of 
all  kinds  of  cutlery,  but  all  England  as  well  has  greatly  prof- 
ited by  his  discovery.  The  manufacture  of  cemented  steel 
also  became  a  leading  industry  of  Sheffield  in  the  eighteenth 
century. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  Sheffield 
contained  2,207  persons ;  at  the  census  of  1881  it  had  284,- 
508.  As  late  as  1736  the  population  of  Sheffield  was  only 
10,121.  A  curious  document  sets  forth  that,  "  by  a  survaie  of 
the  towne  of  Sheffild,  made  the  second  daie  of  Januarie,  1615, 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  55 

by  twenty-four  of  the  most  sufficient  inhabitants  there,  it 
appeareth  that  there  are  in  the  towne  of  Sheffild  2,207  peo- 
ple ;  of  which  there  are  725  which  are  not  able  to  live  with- 
out the  charity  of  their  neighbours ;  these  are  all  begging 
poore.  One  hundred  householders  which  relieve  others.  These 
(though  the  best  sorte)  are  but  poor  artificers;  among  them 
there  is  not  one  that  can  keep  a  teame  on  his  own  land,  and 
not  above  tenn  that  have  ground  of  their  own  that  can  keep 
a  cow.  One  hundred  and  sixty  householders  not  able  to  re- 
lieve others.  These  are  such  (although  they  beg  not)  as 
are  not  able  to  abide  the  storme  of  one  fortnight's  sickness, 
but  would  be  thereby  driven  to  beggary.  One  thousand  two 
hundred  and  twenty-two  children  and  servants  of  the  said 
householders,  the  greatest  part  of  which  are  such  as  live  of 
small  wages,  and  are  constrained  to  work  sore  to  provide 
them  necessaries." 

Benjamin  Huntsman  was  born  in  Lincolnshire,  England, 
in  1704,  of  German  parents,  and  died  at  Attercliffe,  near 
Sheffield,  on  June  20,  1776.  He  was  a  member  of  the  So- 
ciety of  Friends. 

Robert  Hunt  was  born  at  Devonport,  England,  on  Sep- 
tember 1,  1807,  and  died  at  Chelsea,  England,  on  October  17, 
1887. 

Dr.  John  Percy  was  born  at  Nottingham,  England,  on 
March  23,  1817,  and  died  at  Paddington,  England,  on  June 
19,  1889. 

Professor  James  E.  Thorold  Rogers  was  born  at  West 
Meoii,  in  Hampshire,  England,  in  1823,  and  died  at  Oxford, 
England,  on  October  13,  1890. 


56  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE    EARLY  IRON    INDUSTRY   OF   WALES,    IRELAND, 
AND    SCOTLAND. 

IN  preceding  chapters  relating  to  the  British  iron  indus- 
try our  attention  has  been  wholly  occupied  with  the  details 
of  its  development  in  England.  We  will  now  turn  to  the 
early  iron  industry  of  Wales,  Ireland,  and  Scotland. 

It  has  already  been  stated  that  iron  was  made  in  Wales 
during  the  Roman  occupation  of  Britain.  As  the  Welsh 
were  a  somewhat  exclusive  and  practically  an  independent 
people  down  to  a  comparatively  recent  period  it  may  be  as- 
sumed that  they  have  never  since  ceased  to  make  iron,  al- 
though we  have  found  no  details  of  its  manufacture  by  them 
prior  to  the  sixteenth  century.  At  Crickhowell,  in  Brecknock- 
shire, there  were  to  be  found  a  few  years  ago  large  quantities 
of  scoria  of  supposed  Roman  origin.  In  the  sixteenth  centu- 
ry, owing  to  the  scarcity  of  timber  in  England,  some  of  the 
ironmasters  of  Sussex  emigrated  to  Glamorganshire,  in  South 
Wales,  where  they  founded  the  iron  works  of  Aberdare  and 
other  iron  works.  Remains  of  the  works  in  the  Aberdare 
valley  still  exist.  At  Pontypool,  on  the  Welsh  border,  a  blast 
furnace  was  built  by  Capel  Hanbury  in  1565,  to  smelt  the 
Roman  cinder  which  was  found  there,  and  about  1620  "  the 
Hanburys"  are  said  to  have  built  iron  works  at  Llanelly. 
The  development  of  the  extensive  iron  industry  of  Merthyr 
Tydvil  appears  to  date  from  about  1755,  when  the  Dowlais 
iron  works  were  established,  although  iron  i§  said  to  have 
been  made  at  Merthyr  as  long  ago  as  1660.  In  1770  the 
first  coke  furnace  in  South  Wales  was  built  at  Cyfarthfa.  In 
1788  there  were  six  coke  furnaces  in  South  Wales.  Cort's 
inventions  were  promptly  appropriated  by  Welsh  ironmasters. 
The  first  successful  manufacture  of  pig  iron  with  anthracite 
coal  was  accomplished  by  George  Crane,  an  Englishman,  at 
Yniscedwin,  in  Wales,  in  1837. 

Merthyr,  at  one  time  called  the  iron  metropolis  of  Wales, 
is  said  to  owe  its  name  to  Tydvil,  the  daughter  of  Brychan, 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  57 

the  king  of  the  district  and  a  very  devout  old  man,  who  was 
murdered  in  420  by  a  party  of  marauding  Saxons,  or,  as 
stated  by  others,  Irish  Picts,  together  with  her  father  and 
brother.  A  church  was  erected  on  the  spot  to  her  memory 
and  named  after  her,  Merthyr  Tydvil,  or  Tydvil  the  Martyr. 
Tydvil  is  not  an  uncommon  feminine  name  in  Wales  to-day. 

According  to  Scrivenor,  iron-ore  mines  w:ere  opened  in 
Ireland  by  the  English  who  settled  in  the  country  during  the 
reign  of  Elizabeth,  and  iron  itself  was  extensively  manufac- 
tured in  Ireland  by  the  English  during  the  reign  of  James 
the  First  and  afterwards.  The  most  extensive  works  were  in 
the  provinces  of  Munster,  Connaught,  and  Ulster,  and  in  the 
counties  of  Queens,  Kings,  and  Thomond.  In  some  instances 
iron  ore  was  taken  from  England  to  the  sea-coast  of  Ulster 
and  Munster  in  Ireland,  the  latter  country  then  abounding  in 
forests,  but  generally  Ireland  supplied  both  the  ore  and  fuel. 
Most  of  the  iron  produced  was  in  bars  from  forges,  but  ord- 
nance, pots,  and  other  articles  were  also  cast  in  foundries  or 
furnaces.  The  Rebellion  of  1641  put  an  end  to  many  of  the 
English  iron  works  in  Ireland,  some  valuable  works  in  the 
county  of  Mayo  escaping.  In  1660  Sir  William  Petty  estab- 
lished extensive  iron  works  in  the  county  of  Kerry,  which 
continued  in  operation  until  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  they  were  stopped  in  consequence  of  the  scar- 
city of  timber.  In  1672  Sir  William  stated  that  one  thou- 
sand tons  of  iron  were  then  made  in  Ireland.  Near  the  close 
of  the  seventeenth  century  an  act  of  the  British  Parliament 
remitted  the  duties  on  bar  iron  and  on  iron  slit  and  ham- 
mered into  bars  imported  from  Ireland,  the  manufacturing 
industries  of  Ireland  being  then  greatly  depressed.  The  iron 
industry  of  Ireland  survived  until  the  reign  of  George  the 
Second,  in  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  it 
came  to  an  end  in  consequence  of  the  scarcity  of  timber,  the 
competition  of  English  iron,  and  the  unsettled  condition  of 
the  country.  An  effort  was  made  to  revive  it  at  the  close  of 
the  century,  but  it  met  with  slight  success. 

In  1840  there  were  no  iron  works  in  Ireland  "  going  on," 
and  in  1857  there  was  only  one  furnace  standing  in  Ireland. 
There  are  now  no  iron  works  in  the  country.  Irish  ores  were 
exported  to  the  United  States  in  1879  and  1880,  and  in  more 


58  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

recent  years.  In  1888  County  Antrim  in  Ireland  produced 
129,235  tons  of  iron  ore,  and  a  small  quantity  was  also 
produced  in  County  Roscommon.  '  In  1889  County  Antrim 
produced  164,686  tons,  but  no  ore  was  produced  in  County 
Roscommon.  In  all  Ireland  there  were  mined  91,904  tons 
of  coal  in  1888  and  103,201  tons  in  1889. 

It  has  already  been  incidentally  stated  that  iron  was  very 
scarce  in  Scotland  in  the  closing  centuries  of  the  middle  ages, 
the  Scotch  people  obtaining  nearly  all  their  supplies  of  iron 
at  that  time  from  other  countries.  The  Scotch,  however, 
were  noted  during  the  period  mentioned  for  the  excellence 
of  their  swords  and  armor,  the  former  vying  in  temper  with 
those  of  Toledo,  Bilbao,  and  Milan.  In  Sir  Walter  Scott's 
story  of  The  Fair  Maid  of  Perth,  the  incidents  of  which  are 
supposed  to  have  occurred  during  the  last  years  of  the  four- 
teenth century,  the  hero,  Henry  Gow,  is  an  armorer,  a  forger 
of  swords  and  bucklers  and  coats-of-mail.  In  1547  an  Eng- 
lish chronicler  wrote  that  "the  Scots  came  with  swords  all 
broad  and  thin,  of  exceeding  good  temper,  and  universally 
so  made  to  slice  that  I  never  saw  none  so  good,  so  I  think  it 
hard  to  devise  a  better." 

In  a  paper  read  in  1886  before  the  Society  of  Antiquaries 
of  Scotland  Mr.  Ivison  Macadam  fully  described  the  ancient 
iron  industry  of  Scotland.  The  discovery  of  several  mounds 
of  iron  slag  in  Argyleshire  and  elsewhere  in  1881  had  led 
him  to  investigate  their  origin.  A  list  of  many  old  bloom- 
aries  had  been  obtained  at  the  time  his  paper  was  written. 
The  ore  used  in  most  cases  was  bog  ore,  but  occasionally  red 
iron  ore  was  used,  and  even  clayband  ore.  The  two  last 
named  may  have  been  imported  from  England.  The  fuel  was 
wood  or  peat  charcoal,  large  supplies  of  which  could  be  ob- 
tained in  the  neighborhood  of  most  of  the  sites  of  these  old 
iron  works.  Mr.  Macadam  exhibited  specimens  of  the  slag, 
charcoal,  iron  ores,  and  iron  found  in  the  ruins  of  the  bloom- 
aries.  His  valuable  discoveries  completely  establish  the  fact 
that  the  inhabitants  of  Scotland  in  early  times  were  familiar 
with  the  manufacture  of  iron  in  bloomaries,  probably  as 
early  as  the  eleventh  or  twelfth  century.  We  have  already 
mentioned  that  pieces  of  iron  slag  have  been  discovered  in 
the  ruins  of  Celtic  fortified  towns  in  the  Cheviot  hills,  on  the 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  59 

boundary  between  England  and  Scotland,  which  may  relate 
to  a  still  earlier  period. 

Mr.  Macadam  gives  a  circumstantial  account  of  a  blast 
furnace  which  was  erected  in  1607  at  Letterewe,  in  Ross-shire, 
Scotland,  and  which  was  successfully  operated  for  many  years. 
The  foundations  and  other  remains  of  this  first  of  historic 
furnaces  in  Scotland  are  still  to  be  seen.  The  furnace  was 
situated  on  the  north  bank  of  Furnace  Burn,  which  flows  into 
Loch  Maree  about  one  mile  to  the  south  of  Letterewe  House. 
Sir  George  Hay,  a  native  of  Perthshire,  was  the  owner  of  the 
furnace.  An  old  manuscript  refers  to  "  the  woods  of  Letter- 
ewe,  where  the  said  George  Hay  kept  a  colony  and  manu- 
factory of  Englishmen  making  iron  and  casting  great  guns, 
untill  the  woods  of  it  was  spent  and  the  lease  of  it  expired." 
Pennant,  in  his  Tour  in  Scotland,  (1769,)  mentions  "the  re- 
mains of  a  very  ancient  iron  furnace,"  and  adds  that  "  Mr. 
Dounie  has  seen  the  back  of  a  grate  marked  S.  G.  Hay,  or 
Sir  George  Hay,  who  was  head  of  a  company  here  in  the 
time  of  the  Queen  Regent."  Some  of  the  ore  used  was  found 
in  the  neighborhood,  but  a  part  seems  to  have  been  brought 
by  sea  from  England.  Mr.  Macadam  also  describes  the  re- 
mains of  two  other  iron  works  on  Loch  Maree  that  are  prob- 
ably as  old  at  least  as  the  Letterewe  furnace,  one  of  which, 
Fasagh,  may  have  been  a  bloomary,  working  on  bog  ores, 
while  the  other,  Red  Smiddy,  embraced  a  furnace,  for  the 
production  of  guns,  grates,  and  other  castings,  and  a  forge 
for  making  wrought  iron,  the  ores  used  being  red  hematite 
and  clayband. 

Of  the  earliest  of  modern  blast  furnaces  in  Scotland  Mr. 
Macadam  also  gives  a  circumstantial  account.  There  was  a 
furnace  at  Invergarry  about  1730,  which  was  operated  by  a 
Liverpool  company  which  used  imported  ore,  at  least  in  part. 
Some  pigs  of  iron,  inscribed  "  1732,"  have  been  found  doing 
service  as  headstones  in  a  disused  graveyard  at  Gairlochy 
locks,  on  the  Caledonian  canal.  A  furnace  wras  built  at  Bun- 
awe,  in  Argyleshire,  in  1730,  by  an  Irish  company.  This  fur- 
nace ceased  to  be  operated  in  1866.  In  1878  its  machinery 
was  removed  to  England.  The  ore  used  was  imported  from 
Ulverston,  in  Lancashire.  A  furnace  was  built  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Abernethy,  in  Strathspey,  in  1730,  and  there  were 


60  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

also  attached  "four  furnaces  for  making  bar  iron."  At  this 
furnace  "  Glengarry  "  and  "  Strathdown  "  pigs  were  produced. 
Brown  hematite l  iron  ore  for  the  use  of  this  furnace  was 
brought  from  Tomintoul,  in  Banffshire,  a  distance  of  nearly 
twenty  miles,  "  on  pony  back."  A  furnace  called  Craleckan, 
or  Goatfield,  at  Inverleckan,  or  Furnace,  on  Loch  Fyne,  about 
eight  miles  distant  from  Inveraray,  was  built  in  1754  by  a 
Lancashire  company,  which  brought  its  ore  from  England. 
Charcoal  was  taken  to  the  furnace  on  the  backs  of  a  "  string 
of  from  30  to  40  ponies."  This  furnace  also  had  a  forge  at- 
tached to  it.  The  works  ceased  operations  in  1813.  The  first 
blast  furnace  of  the  celebrated  Carron  iron  works,  about  a 
mile  from  Falkirk,  was  built  in  1759  and  first  put  in  opera- 
tion on  January  1,  1760.  These  works  are  still  active. 

Carron  furnace  was  at  first  operated  with  charcoal,  but 
coke  was  afterwards  substituted.  This  furnace  was  the  first 
in  Scotland  to  use  the  new  fuel.  The  manufacture  of  carron- 
ades  was  long  a  specialty  of  the  Carron  iron  works,  from 
which  they  took  their  name.  In  1788  there  were  six  coke 
furnaces  in  Scotland  and  the  two  charcoal  furnaces  of  Bun- 
awe  and  Goatfield. 

There  are  now  no  charcoal  furnaces  in  Scotland,  none  in 
Ireland  or  Wales,  and  but  two  in  all  England.  These  two 
furnaces  were  in  blast  in  1889.  For  several  years  they  have 
produced  but  little  iron.  They  are  known  as  Newlands  and 
Backbarrow,  and  are  situated  near  Ulverston,  in  Lancashire. 
Backbarrow  was  built  not  later  than  1711.  Newlands  was 
built  in  1747. 

About  1782  two  blast  furnaces,  known  as  the  Devon  iron 
works,  were  erected  in  Clackmannanshire,  Scotland.  Mr. 
Richard  Meade,  in  his  Coal  and  Iron  Industries  of  the  United 
Kingdom,  quotes  Sir  John  Sinclair's  description  of  these  cu- 
rious furnaces,  written  in  1792,  which  we  reproduce  below. 

A  steep  bank  rises  more  than  90  feet  from  the  level  of  the  river,  and 
is  composed  of  a  rock,  or  very  thick  stratum  of  limestone,  very  dry  and 
uniform  in  its  texture,  and  almost  free  from  cracks  and  fissures.  Instead 
of  the  usual  method  of  building  with  stone  and  lime,  the  several  parts  of 
the  works  have  been  formed  in  this  bank  by  excavations  made  in  the 
rock.  Two  furnaces,  which  are  each  40  feet  high  and  14  feet  in  diameter, 
and  also  the  spacious  arches  which  give  access  to  the  workmen  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  furnace,  to  draw  off  the  liquid  metal  and  slag,  are  cut  out  of 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  ,   61 

the  rock.  The  roof  which  covers  the  casting  house,  a  room  70  feet  long,  50 
feet  wide,  and  23  feet  high,  is  supported  by  the  sides  of  the  quarry  and 
the  solid  pillars  of  the  rock  that  were  left  for  the  purpose  in  making  the 
excavation.  In  like  manner  is  formed  the  engine  house  and  its  apparatus, 
which  is  intended  to  supply  the  two  furnaces  with  wind,  by  throwing  at 
each  vibration  of  the  engine  a  sufficient  quantity  of  air  out  of  a  large  cylin- 
der into  a  long  gallery  or  close  mine  formed  in  the  rock.  This  magazine 
of  wind  will  contain  10,000  cubic  feet  of  air,  much  condensed  by  the  power 
of  the  engine,  as  the  gallery  is  very  closely  shut  up  and  made  air-tight, 
having  only  two  apertures,  one  to  receive  the  supply  of  air  from  the  air- 
pump  and  the  other  to  admit  a  pipe  that  conducts  the  condensed  air  to 
blow  the  two  furnaces. 

Mr.  Meade  says  that  these  works  continued  in  operation 
for  many  years,  but  were  stopped  about  the  year  1858,  and 
were  soon  afterwards  dismantled. 

At  the  close  of  1889  there  were  769  blast  furnaces  in  Great 
Britain,  of  which  only  444  were  in  blast  during  the  year.  Of 
the  whole  number  there  were  635  in  England  and  Wales  and 
134  in  Scotland.  Of  the  furnaces  out  of  blast  many  were 
of  antiquated  construction  and  will  probably  never  again  be 
active. 


62  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  BRITISH  IRON  INDUSTRY  BUILT  UP  BY  BRITISH 
INVENTIVE  GENIUS. 

THE  eighteenth  century  marked  a  new  era  in  all  those 
branches  of  manufacturing  industry  in  which  the  British  peo- 
ple have  become  prominent.  It  was  the  era  of  machinery, 
which  then  began  to  receive  general  attention  as  a  substitute 
for  hand  labor.  This  era  gave  to  the  people  of  Great  Britain 
the  manufacture  of  India  cotton  goods,  and  it  largely  increas- 
ed their  woolen  industry  and  also  wonderfully  developed  their 
iron  industry.  It  was  in  the  eighteenth  century  that  Great 
Britain,  in  consequence  of  her  quick  appreciation  of  the  val- 
ue of  labor-saving  machinery,  became  the  first  manufacturing 
nation  in  the  world ;  in  the  preceding  century  four-fifths  of 
all  British  workingmen  were  still  farmers  or  farm  laborers. 

During  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the 
whole  of  the  nineteenth  century  down  to  the  present  time  no 
other  country  has  occupied  so  conspicuous  a  position  in  the 
manufacture  of  iron  and  steel  as  Great  Britain.  Spain  and 
Germany  had  both  been  more  prominent  in  the  production 
C  of  these  essentials  of  modern  civilization,  but  Great  Britain 
spurned  all  -opposition  when  she  began  to  make  pig  iron 
with  the  aid  of  mineral  fuel  and  powerful  blowing  engines. 
She  had  iron  ores  and  mineral  fuel  in  abundance,  and  her 
people  had  applied  to  the  utilization  of  these  products  their 
invincible  energy  and  their  newly-developed  inventive  genius. 
Thenceforward  the  lack  of  timber  for  charcoal,  which  had 
previously  almost  destroyed  her -once  flourishing  iron  indus- 
try, was  no  longer  lamented  and  was  but  little  felt.  She  was 
afterwards  the  first  nation  to  refine  pig  iron  in  puddling 
furnaces  and  to  make  bar  iron  in  rolling  mills.  France,  Ger- 
many, and  other  Continental  countries  might  have  substi- 
tuted mineral  fuel  for  charcoal,  invented  the  puddling  fur- 
nace, or  perfected  the  rolling  mill  and  the  steam  engine,  but 
none  of  them  did. 

The   whole  world  is  indebted  to  England  and   Scotland 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  63 

for  the  inventions  which  gave  a  fresh  impetus  to  the  manu- 
facture of  iron  in  the  eighteenth  century.  Payne  and  Han- 
bury,  who  first  succeeded  in  rolling  sheet  iron;  Darby,  who 
first  successfully  and  continuously  used  coke  in  the  blast  fur- 
nace ;  Huntsman,  who  invented  the  process  of  making  steel  in 
crucibles  ;  Smeaton,  who  invented  cast-iron  blowing  cylinders  ; 
and  Cort,  who  invented  grooved  rolls  and  the  puddling  fur- 
nace, were  Englishmen  ;  while  Watt,  who  perfected  the  steam 
engine,  was  a  Scotchman.  It  is  also  indebted  to  the  same 
countries  for  most  of  the  inventions  of  the  present  century 
which  have  further  developed  the  manufacture  of  iron  and 
increased  the  demand  for  it,  and  which  have  almost  created 
the  manufacture  of  steel.  Stephenson,  the  Englishman,  im- 
proved the  locomotive  in  1815,  and  in  1825  the  first  passen- 
ger railroad  in  the  world  was  opened  in  England,  his  loco- 
motive hauling  the  trains.  The  railroad  is  the  greatest  of 
all  the  consumers  of  iron  and  steel.  Neilson,  the  Scotchman, 
invented  the  hot-blast  in  1828 ;  Crane,  the  Englishman,  ap- 
plied it  to  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron  with  anthracite  coal  in 
1837 ;  Nasmyth,  the  Scotchman,  invented  the  steam  hammer 
in  1838  and  the  pile-driver  in  1843 ;  and  Bessemer,  the  Eng- 
lishman, invented  in  1855  the  process  which  bears  his  name 
and  is  the  flower  of  all  metallurgical  achievements — a  share 
in  the  honor  of  this  invention,  however,  being  fairly  due  to 
the  co-operating  genius  of  Robert  F.  Mushet,  also  an  English- 
man, but  born  of  Scotch  parentage.  The  Siemens  regenera- 
tive gas  furnace,  which  has  been  so  extensively  used  in  the 
manufacture  of  iron  and.  steel,  is  also  an  English  invention, 
althougtuthje,  inventors,  Sir  William  and  Frederick  Siemens, 
while  citizens  of  England,  were  natives  of  Hanover  in  Ger- 
many. 

It  is  only  just  to  add  that  Sir  Henry  Bessemer,  although 
born  in  England,  is  the  son  of  a  French  refugee  who  settled 
in  England  during  the  French  Revolution  of  1789,  and  that 
Benjamin  Huntsman,  the  inventor  of  the  process  for  manu- 
facturing cast  steel  in  crucibles,  was  the  son  of  German  pa- 
rents, although  himself  born  in  England.  Mr.  Goran  F.  G6- 
ranssoii,  of  Sandviken,  Sweden,  also  assisted  in  perfecting  the 
Bessemer  process.  It  was,  however,  enterprising  and  sturdy 
England  which  nursed  the  genius  of  the  great  inventors  we 

' 


64  THE    MANUFACTURE    OP 

have  mentioned  who  were  of  Continental  birth  or  extraction, 
and  it  was  in  England  that  the  ripe  fruits  of  their  inventions 
were  first  abundantly  gathered. 

That  Great  Britain  at  the  beginning  of  her  manufacturing 
activity  did  not  seek  to  extend  the  influence  of  her  new  light 
and  life  to  other  countries,  but  by  various  acts  of  Parliament 
sought  to  prevent  the  introduction  of  her  inventions  and  the 
emigration  of  her  skilled  artisans  into  those  countries,  is  not 
here  a  subject  of  comment;  nor  is  the  strict  adherence  of 
Great  Britain  to  a  policy  of  protection  to  home  industries  by 
customs  duties  during  five  centuries  and  down  to  almost  the 
middle  of  the  present  century  a  subject  of  present  comment. 
Both  measures  undoubtedly  fostered  the  growth  of  British 
manufacturing  industries,  and  in  the  end  the  world  was  bene- 
fited by  British  inventions,  which  found  their  way  across  the 
English  channel  and  the  Atlantic  ocean,  and  by  the  example 
of  British  energy  and  British  enterprise  in  the  utilization  of 
native  manufacturing  resources. 

The  United  States  is  to-day  a  ^ecognizei  and  formidable 

|:  rival  .of  Great  Britain  in  the  manufacture  of  all  forms  of  iron 

and  steel,  partly  because  we  have  abundant  native  resources 

for  their  production,  and  partly  because  we  are  of  the  same 

1  blood  as  the  British  people  and  their  German  ancestors,  but 

j  chiefly  because  we  have  adopted  and  in  many  instances  have 

improved  upon  her  invaluable  engineering  and  metallurgical 

inventions,  the  most  important  of  which  have  been  briefly 

summarized  in  this  chapter. 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  65 


CHAPTER  VII. 

EARLY  PROCESSES  IN  THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON 

AND   STEEL. 

EXCEPT  incidentally  the  various  processes  for  the  manu- 
facture of  iron  which  were  in  use  in  the  early  ages  of  the 
world's  history,  as  well  as  in  more  recent  times,  have  not  been 
referred  to  in  the  preceding  pages.  Further  notice  of  some 
of  the  jfrocesses  that  were  successively  in  use  before  the  begin- 
ning of  the  present  century  seems,  however,  to  be  desirable, 
if  for  no  other  reason  than  to  show  how  rude  and  unproduc- 
tive those  processes  were  in*-  comparison  with  the  improved 
methods  which  are  now  in  use. 

The  methods  of  manufacturing  iron  which  were  in  use  in 
Asia  and  Africa  in  the  earliest  ages  were  few  in  number  and 
of  extreme  simplicity.  They  all  produced  wrought  iron  with 
the  aid  of  wood  or  charcoal  as  fuel,  although  steel  was  also 
produced  by  some  of  them.  One  of  these  processes,  still  ex- 
isting in  Burmah,  did  not  require  an  artificial  blast.  A  per- 
pendicular circular  excavation,  ten  or  twelve  feet  deep  and 
open  at  the  top,  was  made  in  the  side  of  a  bank  or  hillock, 
in  which  ore  and  fuel  were  placed  in  alternate  layers,  and  to 
which  the  necessary  draft  for  combustion  was  applied  through 
one  or  more  openings  near  the  bottom.  The  product  was 
a  lump,  or  bloom,  of  iron.  Another  process  applied  an  arti- 
ficial blast  to  a  small  excavation  in  the  ground,  or  to  a  low 
furnace  built  of  clay  or  stone  and  standing  alone,  the  product 
being  also  a  lump  of  iron.  This  artificial  blast  was  supplied 
by  a  bellows  which  .was  usually  made  of  goat  skins,  having 
a  nozzle,  or  tuyere,  of  bamboo  and  burnt  clay,  and  worked 
by  the  feet  or  hands.  It  is  an  interesting  scientific  fact  that 
the  bellows  and  its  tuyere,  or  nozzle,  both  of  which  in  some 
form  are  in  general  use  to-day  wherever  iron  is  made,  are 
not  only  of  prehistoric  origin  but  are  still  used  in  all  their 
primitive  simplicity  in  the  manufacture  of  iron.  Goat- 
skin bellows  are  in  use  in  India  and  in  the  interior  of  Africa 
to-day  in  connection  with  small  furnaces.  In  some  parts  of 


66  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

India,  and  in  China,  Japan,  Borneo,  and  Madagascar,  blowing 
cylinders  of  wood  or  bamboo,  having  valves  and  pistons,  and 
worked  like  a  pump  by  manual  labor,  are  now  used,  and  were 
probably  used  in  remote  ages.  The  bloom  of  iron,  whether 
produced  by  natural  or  artificial  blast,  was  reheated  and  freed 
from  impurities  and  adhering  charcoal  by  repeated  hammer- 
ing, in  the  course  of  which  refining  operation  it  was  divided 
into  suitable  parts  for  practical  use.  The  fire  of  the  smith 
who  gave  to  the  iron  its  final  shape  was  supplied  with  a  goat- 
skin or  bamboo  blast.  The  ore  which  was  smelted  by  these 
primitive  processes  was  broken  into  small  pieces  and  other- 
wise carefully  prepared.  In  some  parts  of  India  and  in  sev- 
eral other  Asiatic  countries  the  ore  was  magnetic  and  well 
adapted  by  its  purity  to  the  manufacture  of  steel. 

The  manner  in  which  the  *air  was  expelled  from  the 
goat-skin  bellows  of  antiquity  doubtless  varied  in  different 
countries,  but  the  pressure  of  the  feet  of  one  workman  on 
two  such  bellows,  each  attached  to  a  nozzle,  or  tuyere,  was 
probably  the  method  in  most  general  use.  This  method  is 
still  used  in  Africa.  Wilkinson,  in  his  Manners  and  Customs 
of  the  Ancient  Egyptians,  quoted  by  Day,  mentions  his  discov- 
ery at  Thebes,  on  the  walls  of  a  tomb  built  in  the  reign  of 
Thothmes  the  Third,  about  fifteen  centuries  before  the  Chris- 
tian era,  of  the  picture  of  an  Egyptian  furnace  and  bellows, 
with  two  workmen  engaged  in  expelling  with  their  feet  the 
air  from  as  many  pairs  of  bellows,  "  consisting  of  flexible 
bags  formed  of  the  skins  of  animals,  and  each  provided  with 
a  cord  which  the  operator  holds  in  his  hands.  From  each  of 
these  flexible  bags  a  tube  proceeds  into  the  heap  of  fuel  and 
ore,  and  the  blast  is  produced  by  the  operator  transferring  the 
weight  of  his  body  alternately  from  one  foot  to  the  other. 
The  bags  are  inflated  by  pulling  up  the  upper  part  by  the 
cord,  this  upper  part  having  a  hole  or  valve  therein  for  al- 
lowing the  air  to  enter,  and  which  is  closed  by  the  heel  of 
the  operator  on  his^again  transferring  his  weight  to  it." 

At  a  later  period,  in  the  days  of  Ezekiel,  about  six  centu- 
ries before  Christ,  the  use  of  a  more  powerful  bellows  than 
that  above  described  is  clearly  implied.  In  the  22d  chapter 
and  20th  vers^  of  the  book  of  the  prophet  referred  to  we  read 
as  follows :  "As  they  gather  silver,  and  brass,  and  iron,  and 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  67 

lead,  and  tin  into  the  midst  of  the  furnace,  to  blow  the  fire 
upon  it,  to  melt  it,  so  will  I  gather  you  in  mine  anger  and 
in  my  fury,  and  I  will  leave  you  there  and  melt  you." 

The  celebrated  Indian  steel,  or  wootz,  which  is  chiefly  used 
in  the  manufacture  of  sword  blades,  is  obtained  at  the  pres- 
ent time  by  remelting  pieces  of  native  iron  in  small  crucibles 
which  are  only  a  few  inches  high,  containing  finely-chopped 
wood,  the  crucibles  being  placed  in  a  furnace  heated  with  a 
blast  supplied  by  bellows  usually  made  of  goat  skins  or  bam- 
boo cylinders.  More  than  two  thousand  years  ago  the  proc- 
ess was  substantially  the  same  that  it  is  now.  It  is  described 
by  Aristotle,  who  lived  in  the  fourth  century  before  Christ. 

The  method  of  manufacturing  Indian  steel  in  the  Trichi- 
nopoly  district  in  India  in  our  day  is  fully  described  by  the 
East  Indian  Engineer  in  the  following  words,  which  plainly 
suggest- the  crucible  process  perfected  by  Huntsman. 

The  process  employed  is  very  simple.  Small  quantities  of  iron  are  en- 
closed in  a  small  earthen  crucible  with  a  few  pieces  of  the  wood  of  the  ava- 
rain  plant  and  two  or  three  green  leaves.  A  top  is  luted  on,  and,  when  dry, 
the  whole  is  exposed  to  the  heat  of  a  small  charcoal  furnace  till  the  iron  is 
melted,  a  fact  which  the  operator  ascertains  by  picking  up  the  crucibles  in  a 
long  pincer  and  shaking  them.  The  vessels  are  allowed  to  cool,  and  are 
then  broken  open,  when  a  knob  of  steel  is  found  at  the  bottom.  Two  sizes 
of  ingots  are  made,  weighing  about  8  ounces  and  10 1  ounces  respectively. 
The  crucibles  consist  of  a  mixture  of  red  earth  and  charcoal,  made  of  paddy 
husks,  kneaded  together.  The  lid  is  of  the  same  material  and  put  on  wet. 
It  appears  hardly  to  contract  at  all  in  drying,  and  a  fairly  air-tight  vessel  is 
consequently  produced.  The  clay  is  not  nearly  refractory  enough  for  the 
heat  it  is  exposed  to,  as  the  crucibles  are  completely  vitrified  and  spoilt  at 
the  end  of  a  single  operation. 

The  iron  used  is  brought  from  the  Namakal  Taluk,  of  Salem,  and  ap- 
pears to  be  a  rough  description  of  wrought  iron.  For  the  smaller  size  of  in- 
got it  is  cut  into  pieces  weighing  as  nearly  as  possible  10  ounces,  (a  .small 
piece  is  added  to  make  up  the  weight,  if  necessary,)  and  this  quantity  is 
placed  in  each  crucible  with  |  of  an  ounce  of  pieces  of  the  dry  wood  of  the 
avaram  plant.  Two  or  three  green  leaves  (the  kind  is  a  matter  of  no  conse- 
quence) are  placed  on  the  top,  and  the  charge  is  closed  up  with  a  lump  of 
clay  carefully  plastered  all  round.  Great  care  is  taken  in  putting  in  the  cor- 
rect proportions  of  iron  and  avaram  wood,  and  the  operators  assert  that,  if 
less  is  used,  the  iron  is  not  melted,  and,  if  more,  it  will  not  stand  being 
worked  afterwards.  The  green  leaves  probably  serve  in  some  way  toward 
retarding  the  drying  of  the  lid  and  preventing  it  from  cracking. 

The  furnace  consists  of  an  inverted  cone  of  earth  worlAbout  two  feet  in 
diameter  and  the  same  in  depth,  the  apex  opening  into  an  ash-pit  below. 
At  one  side,  and  protected  from  the  heat  by  a  mud  wrall,  is  a  small  shed  in 


68  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

which  two  bellowsmen  sit  and  work  a  couple  of  skin  bellows  most  vigorous- 
ly. The  air  is  admitted  into  the  furnace  through  a  hole  near  the  bottom. 
In  preparing  a  furnace  some  straw  is  first  placed  at  the  bottom  below  the 
air-hole  and  charcoal  is  then  thrown  in  to  a  suitable  height.  On  this  twen- 
ty-five of  these  conical  crucibles  are  placed  with  the  point  downward,  and, 
when  all  are  in  position  they  appear  to  form  a  sort  of  circle,  and  to  be  inde- 
pendent of  the  layer  of  charcoal  below.  More  charcoal  is  placed  above,  and 
the  furnace  is  then  lighted  through  the  air-hole.  Fresh  -fuel  is  thrown  on 
above  from  time  to  time,  and  one  or  two  of  the  crucibles  are  occasionally 
lifted  with  long-handled  pincers  to  allow  the  burning  charcoal  to  fall 
through  and  replenish  the  supply  below.  The  straw  remains  untouched  by 
the  fire  throughout  the  process.  The  crucibles  are  given  a  sharp  shake  on 
these  occasions,  which  is  said  to  assist  the  process,  and  towards  its  conclusion 
allows  of  the  operators  ascertaining  whether  the  iron  is  melted  or  not. 

As  the  mouth  of  the  furnace  is  open,  the  waste  of  fuel  is  enormous.  Af- 
ter about  an  hour  or  an  hour  and  a  half  the  feel  of  a  crucible,  when  lifted, 
shows  its  contents  to  be  liquid.  The  process  is  then  considered  to  be  com- 
pleted, and  the  crucibles  are  allowed  to  cool,  after  which  they  are  broken 
open,  a  knob  of  steel  being  found  at  the  bottom  of  each.  The  ingots  are  re- 
heated and  hammered  into  oblong  pieces,  in  which  shape  they  are  sold.  All 
the  crucibles  do  not  remain  absolutely  air-tight  during  the  process,  the  lids 
becoming  cracked  without  affecting  the  result. 

The  methods  by  which  the  iron  pillar  of  Delhi  and  the 
heavy  iron  beams  of  Indian  temples  were  forged  will  probably 
always  remain  a  mystery.  Metallurgists  of  the  present  day 
are  certainly  unable  to  understand  how  these  large  masses  of 
iron  could  have  been  forged  by  a  people  who  do  not  appear 
to  have  possessed  any  of  the  mechanical  appliances  for  their 
manufacture  which  are  now  necessary  in  the  production  of 
similar  articles.  They  could  not  have  been  forged  by  hand. 

China  is  said  by  Day  to  have  made  steel  long  before  the 
Christian  era  by  the  method  revived  in  modern  times  of  im- 
mersing wrought  iron  in  a  bath  of  cast  iron,  which  modern 
method  has  been  perfected  in  the  open-hearth  process. 

In  the  interesting  account  by  Dr.  Bell  of  a  Journey  from 
St.  Petersburg  to  Pekin  from  1719  to  1721,  from  which  we  have 
already  quoted,  we  find  an  allusion  to  cast  iron  in  China  at 
that  period  which  is  worthy  of  preservation,  as  it  seems  to  in- 
dicate that  the  Chinese  did  not  borrow  the  art  of  casting  iron 
from  the  Europeans.  Dr.  Bell  says :  "  My  landlord  being  in 
his  shop  I  paid  him  a  visit,  where  I  found  six  kettles  placed 
in  a  row  on  fujnaces,  having  a  separate  opening  under  each  of 
them  for  receiving  the  fuel,  which  consisted  of  a  few  small 
sticks  and  straw.  On  his  pulling  a  thong  he  blew  a  pair  of 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  69 

bellows,  which  made  all  his  kettles  boil  in  a  very  short  time. 
They  are  indeed  very  thin,  and  made  of  cast  iron,  being  ex- 
tremely smooth  both  within  and  without."  The  same  writer 
refers  as  follows  to  the  cannon  then  in  use  in  the  Chinese 
wall:  "While  we  stopped  at  one  of  the  gates  to  refresh  our- 
selves I  took  the  opportunity  to  walk  into  one  of  .these  towers, 
where  I  saw  some  hundreds  of  old  iron  cannon  thrown  to- 
gether as  useless.  On  examination  I  found  them  to  be  com- 
posed of  three  or  four  pieces  of  hammered  iron*  joined,  and 
fastened  together  with  hoops  of  the  same  metal.  The  Chinese 
have,  however,  now  learned  to  cast  as  fine  brass  cannon  as 
are  anywhere  to  be  found."  The  old  cannon  were  bombards. 
In  the  years  1881  to  1883  a  French  scientific  commission, 
inquiring  into  the  mineral  resources  of  Indo-China,  visited 
the  important  deposit  of  iron  ore  at  Ph'nom  Deck,  in  the 
province  of  Compong-Thom,  in  Cambodia.  The  manner  in 
which  this  ore  is  converted  into  iron  is  very  suggestive  of 
the  ancient  methods  which  have  been  briefly  described. 

The  native  Khouys  manufacture  a  small  quantity  of  extremely  pure 
iron,  for  which  there  is  a  great  demand ;  it  is  exported  to  considerable  dis- 
tances, and  serves  as  money  over  an  immense  area.  A  mixture  of  the  ores 
is  used,  the  chief  being  a  brown  hematite,  containing  under  40  per  cent,  of 
metallic  iron,  .with  over  2  per  cent,  of  manganese,  and  associated  with  the 
surrounding  tuff.  The  metallurgy  is  divided  into  two  parts:  first,  the  fab- 
rication of  an  iron-sponge ;  and,  second,  the  elaboration  of  the  sponge  and 
its  transformation  into  small  hammered  bars.  The  sponge  is  made  in  a 
rectangular  furnace,  8  feet  by  3  feet,  and  16  inches  deep,  which  is  con- 
structed on  a  mass  of  earth  nearly  3  feet  above  the  ground.  The  walls  and 
base  of  the  furnace  consist  of  refractory  earth,  mixed  with  very  fine  white 
sand.  The  charge  is  about  4  cwts.  of  mineral,  with  about  15  bushels  of 
charcoal,  in  thin  alternate  layers. 

The  operation  continues  slowly  for  eight  hours,  the  blast  being  dis- 
tributed from  a  great  number  of  bamboo  tuyeres,  the  bellows,  of  curious 
construction,  being  made  of  buifalo  and  deer-skins;  afterwards  for  two  to 
four  hours  the  blast  is  much  stronger.  During  the  operation  the  slag  is 
frequently  removed.  The  resulting  sponge  is  sold  to  the  native  forges  to 
be  made  into  bars,  which  is  accomplished  by  a  laborious  and  primitive 
process.  The  bars  are  far  from  being  homogeneous,  some  parts  being  of 
a  steely  character  alternating  with  portions  of  soft  iron.  The  bars  weigh 
about  1  pound,  and  sell  through  Cambodia  and  Siam  at  prices  attaining 
the  rate  of  £60  per  ton. 

A  recent  traveler  in  Corea,  C.  Illing,  describes  as  follows 
a  Corean  furnace  and  blowing  apparatus  of  the  present  day, 


70  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

by  means   of  which  "  good  cast-iron  household  utensils   are 
made"  and  "  steel  is  produced  on  a  small  scale." 

The  author  was  unfortunately  unable  to  inspect  a  Corean  ironworks  in 
operation.  An  old  abandoned  furnace  he  found,  on  measuring,  to  be  8  feet 
high.  At  top  it  had  an  elliptical  section  4J  feet  long  and  2£  feet  wide,  whilst 
at  bottom  the  section  was  more  circular  and  measured  15  inches  across.  The 
blowing  engine  was  formed  of  a  pit,  8  feet  long  and  15  inches  wide,  semi- 
circular at  the  bottom.  Its  walls  and  .floor  were  rendered  air-tight  by  means 
of  bricks  and  clay,  carefully  smoothed.  In  its  centre  perpendicular  to  its 
longitudinal  axis  there  was  a  parting  wall,  and  on  this  was  the  axis  of  ro- 
tation of  a  horizontal  board  fitting  closely  to  the  walls.  This  board  was 
moved  up  and  down  like  a  see-saw  by  twro  workmen  with  their  feet,  where- 
by the  air  was  alternately  compressed  in  the  two  air-tight  quadrants  of  the 
pit,  and  a  continuous  current  was  produced,  which  passed  through  two  valves 
opening  outwards  .into  the  pipe  leading  to  the  furnace.  The  iron  ore  was 
smelted  with  charcoal  as  fuel,  and  with  lime  as  flux,  and  the  white  pig  iron 
obtained  was  cast  in  clay  moulds.  Lumps  of  pig  iron,  8  inches  in  diameter, 
were  converted  into  malleable  iron  in  small  smithy  fires,  worked  with  a 
blast  similar  to  that  described,  and  from  this  iron  knives,  nails,  scythes,  etc-., 
were  made  in  the  same  forge. 

In  the  official  catalogue  of  the  Japanese  section  of  the 
Centennial  Exhibition  held  at  Philadelphia  in  1876  the  "old 
method "  of  smelting  iron  in  Japan,  which  still  exists  side  by 
side  with  modern  methods,  is  described  in  detail  as  follows : 

The  smelting  of  iron  by  the  old  method  is  effected  in  small  furnaces 
of  rectangular  section,  built  on  the  principle  of  the  stucko/en,  12  to  15  feet 
high.  The  building  materials  are  fire-clay,  and  for  the  hearth  a  mixture  of 
fire  clay  and  charcoal  powder.  The  blast  is  produced  either  by  means  of  a 
pair  of  wooden  box-bellows,  moved  by  hand,  or  else  by  means  of  a  sort  of 
balance-bellows  of  peculiar  construction.  The  magnetic  ore  is  first  calcined 
in  large  lumps  and  afterwards  broken  into  smaller  pieces  with  hand  ham- 
mers, then  smelted  with  or  without  flux. 

The  furnaces  for  smelting  the  iron-sand  are  of  a  peculiar  construction. 
The  ground  is  dug  out  so  as  to  form  a  pit  12  feet  by  15,  and  10  feet  deep, 
and  this  is  filled  up  to  a  depth  of  9  feet  with  hard  powdered  charcoal ;  then 
comes  a  layer  of  clay  and  sand,  which  is  dried  and  hardened  by  covering 
it  with  charcoal  fire.  The  ashes  being  taken  away,  the  pit  is  filled  up  with 
charcoal-powder,  and  the  surface  coated  with  a  fire-proof  mixture.  Upon 
this  foundation  the  furnace  is  built,  9  feet  by  4  feet  at  the  basis,  and  4  feet 
high.  The  interior  resembles  to  a  great  extent  the  well-known  Rachette 
furnace,  forming  a  wedge-like  hollow  space,  with  a  horizontal  section  of  6' 
in  length,  and  having  a  line  of  tweers  (5  with  the  above  dimension)  on 
each  of  the  long  sides.  When  the  smelting  begins  the  furnace  is  en- 
tirely filled  up  with  charcoal,  the  box-bellows  are  put  to  work,  and  12  hours 
later,  as  the  whole  mass  sinks  down,  iron-sand  and  charcoal  are  filled  in. 
The  smelting  lasts  two  days  and  three  nights.  Generally  3,750  kilos  of  iron- 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  71 

sand  are  smelted  with  an  equal  weight  of  charcoal,  and  yield  45  per  cent,  of 
\ng  iron  and  1  per  cent,  of  steel  in  loops  or  blooms.  When  the  above-named 
quantity  has  been  smelted  the  liquid  iron  is  run  off,  and  as  soon  as  the  fur- 
nace is  cool  enough,  the  steel  loops  hanging  against  the  walls  are  broken 
off.  The  whole  process  lasts  about  8  days,  viz.,  2  days  for  building  the  fur- 
nace, 3  days  for  smelting,  and  3  days  for  coating,  for  removing  the  steel, 
etc.,  and  for  cleaning  the  place  in  order  to  be  able  to  build  a  new  furnace. 

The  "  balance-bellows  of  peculiar  construction  "  above  re- 
ferred to  are  very  similar  to  the  Corean  bellows  already  de- 
scribed. The  following  minute  description  of  the  Japanese 
balance-bellows,  taken  from  the  same  official  source  that  has 
already  been  mentioned,  will  possess  value  for  mechanical  en- 
gineers who  may  have  been  interested  in  the  Corean  bellows. 

Suppose  a  horizontal  cylinder  cut  by  two  planes  passing  through  the 
axis,  and  forming  between  them  an  angle  of  about  30° ;  two  opposite  sectors 
will  be  cut  out.  A  rectangular  plane,  equal  to  the  axial  section,  and  balanc- 
ing upon  the  axis  of  the  primary  cylinder,  would  fit  the  sides  of  the  box  in 
each  position,  and,  when  made  to  balance  alternately  from  one  side  to  the 
other,  would  act  like  the  piston  of  a  common  box-bellows.  According  to 
this  geometrical  principle,  the  box  of  the  bellows  is  composed  of  two  cylin- 
drical sectors,  and  the  balancing  plane  is  made  of  wooden  boards,  resting  by 
its  middle  line  upon  a  beam,  which  forms  the  central  edge  of  the  two  sectors 
(or  the  axis  of  the  aforesaid  imaginary  cylinder).  The  compressed  air  from 
each  side  is  discharged  into  a  short  channel  cut  at  an  incline  of  45  degrees 
into  this  beam,  in  the  centre  of  which  they  unite  into  a  main  outward  pas- 
sage for  the  blast.  At  the  place  where  these  two  oblique  channels  meet  to 
form  the  main  pipe,  a  flap-valve  is  placed,  which,  being  put  into  motion  by 
the  compressed  air,  closes  alternately,  either  of  the  two  short  channels  when- 
ever the  opposite  half  of  the  balance-piston  moves  down.  Two  flap-valves, 
fitted  each  to  one  side  of  the  piston,  allow  the  outer  air  to  enter  one  or  the 
other  half  of  the  bellows.  The  balancing  motion  of  the  piston  is  produced 
by  treading,  two  or  three  men  standing  on  each  end  of  this  blasting  ma- 
chinery. 

Mr.  David  Forbes,  F.  R.  S.,  wrote  in  the  Journal  of  the 
British  Iron  and  Steel  Institute  in  1872  :  "  From  information 
derived  from  Sir  John  Swinburne  it  appears  that  the  negro 
tribes  in  the  interior  of  Africa,  some  800  miles  from  Natal,  are 
extremely  expert  in  the  manufacture  of  wrought  iron,  which 
they  smelt  in  little  clay  furnaces  from  the  native  ores.  They 
sell  the  iron  thus  made,  which  is  said  to  be  extremely  good  in 
quality,  at  so  low  a  price  that  it  is  cheaper  than  that  which  is 
imported  by  the  settlers  at  the  gold  mines,  who  consequently 
employ  it  for  their  implements." 

The  primitive  processes  for  manufacturing  iron,  or  modi- 


72  THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 

fications  of  them,  were  adopted  in  Europe  when  that  conti- 
nent commenced  to  make  iron.  The  manufacture  of  iron  in 
Belgium  and  England  without  the  aid  of  an  artificial  blast, 
about  the  time  of  the  Christian  era,  has  already  been  referred 
to.  It  is  not  known  whether  other  European  countries  ever 
made  iron  in  the  same  way.  At  Lustin,  in  Belgium,  between 
Namur  and  Dinant,  two  ancient  furnaces  or  bloomaries  were 
discovered  in  1870  on  the  top  of  a  hill,  with  iron  yet  remain- 
ing in  them.  They  consisted  of  simple  oval  excavations  with 
rounded  bottoms  in  a  bed  of  clay,  each  12  feet  long  and  9  feet 
wide,  with  a  depth  in  the  middle  of  3  feet,  the  top  being  level 
with  the  surface  of  the  surrounding  soil.  A  channel  exca- 
vated in  the  clay,  but  covered  over  with  stones,  conducted  the 
wind  into  the  lower  portion  of  each  furnace.  The  opening 
of  this  channel  was  turned  in  the  direction  of  the  prevailing 
wind,  so  that  iron  could  only  have  been  made  on  windy  days. 
These  bloomaries  contained  lumps  of  crude  wrought  iron. 

The  English  antiquarian,  Thomas  Wright,  in  The  Celt,  the 
Roman,  and  the  Saxon,  quotes  from  Mr.  Brace's  account  of  the 
Roman  wall  a  statement  concerning  the  discovery  not  many 
years  ago  of  the  character  of  the  blast  used  in  "  the  furnaces 
of  the  extensive  Roman  iron  works"  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Epiacum,  (Lanchester,)  in  England.  Mr.  Bruce  says:  "  Two 
tunnels  had  been  formed  in  the  side  of  a  hill ;  they  were  wide 
at  one  extremity,  but  tapered  off  to  a  narrow  bore  at  the 
other,  where  they  met  in  a  point.  The  mouths  of  the  chan- 
nels opened  toward  the  west,  from  which  quarter  a  prevalent 
wind  blows  in  this  valley,  and  sometimes  with  great  violence. 
The  blast  received  by  them  would,  when  the  wind  was  high, 
be  poured  with  considerable  force  and  effect  upon  the  smelt- 
ing furnaces  at  the  extremity  of  the  tunnels."  In  a  foot-note 
Mr.  Wright  adds  the  following,  which  is  curiously  suggestive 
of  the  hot-blast :  "  We  are  told  by  the  early  Spanish  writers 
that  the  Peruvians  built  their  furnaces  for  smelting  silver  on 
eminences  where  the  air  was  freest ;  they  were  perforated  on 
all  sides  with  holes,  through  which  the  air  was  driven  when 
the  wind  blew,  which  was  the  only  time  when  the  work  could 
be  carried  on,  and  under  each  hole  was  made  a  projection  of 
the  stonework,  on  which  was  laid  burning  coals  to  heat  the 
air  before  it  entered  the  furnace." 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  73 

As  no  evidence  exists  that  iron  was  ever  made  by  the 
Romans  in  the  south  of  Europe  without  the  aid  of  an  arti- 
ficial blast,  it  may  be  fairly  assumed  that  the  Belgian  furna- 
ces above  described  and  the  methods  of  manufacture  in  Eng- 
land which  are  described  by  Mr.  Bruce  and  others  are  of  na- 
tive origin.  The  Romans  may  for  a  time  have  continued  the 
native  practice,  especially  as  the  manufacture  of  iron  in  both 
Belgium  and  Britain  would  be  mainly  confined  to  the  na- 
tive inhabitants,  but  long  before  their  withdrawal  from  these 
countries  in  the  fifth  century  the  superior  practice  of  South- 
ern Europe  would  be  generally  introduced. 

In  the  south  of  Europe  the  bellows  was  certainly  used  to 
produce  a  blast  long  before  the  Roman  invasion  of  Britain. 
Homer,  quoted  by  Fairbairn, "  represents  Hephsestus  as  throw- 
ing the  materials  from  which  the  shield  of  Achilles  was  to  be 
forged  into  a  furnace  urged  by  twenty  pairs  of  bellows."  The 
bellows  first  used  by  the  Greeks  were  probably  made  of  goat 
skins,  but  subsequently,  as  early  probably  as  the  time  of  Ho- 
mer, and  certainly  as  early  as  the  third  century  before  Christ, 
larger  and  more  powerful  bellows  were  made  of  the  hides  of 
cattle,  and  larger  furnaces  or  bloomaries  were  erected.  These 
larger  bellows  were  the  same  in  principle  as  the  common 
blacksmith's  bellows  of  our  day,  and  they  would  be  used  by 
the  Greeks  and  Romans  in  smelting  the  ore  as  well  as  in  re- 
fining and  shaping  the  iron.  Of  their  furnaces  and  forges  we 
know  but  little.  Virgil,  who  lived  in  the  first  century  before 
Christ,  gives  us  in  the  Fourth  Georgic  a  view  of  a  refinery 
forge  as  it  doubtless  existed  among  the  Romans  in  his  day. 

As  when  the  Cyclops,  at  th'  almighty  nod, 

New  thunder  hasten  for  their  angry  god, 

Subdued  in  fire  the  stubborn  metal  lies: 

One  brawny  smith  the  puffing  bellows  plies, 

And  draws  and  blows  reciprocating  air: 

Others  to  quench  the  hissing  mass  prepare: 

With  lifted  arms  they  order  every  blow, 

And  chime  their  sounding  hammers  in  a  row: 

With  labored  anvils  Etna  groans  below. 

Strongly  they  strike ;  huge  flakes  of  flames  expire : 

With  tongs  they  turn  the  steel  and  vex  it  in  the  fire. 

Diodorus  of  Sicily,  quoted  by  Scrivenor,  mentions  the  iron 
ores  of  Elba/' which  the  natives  dig  and  cut  out  of  the  ground 


74  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

to  melt,  in  order  for  the  making  of  iron,  much  of  which  metal 
is  in  this  sort  of  stone.  The  workmen  employed  first  cut  the 
stone  in  pieces,  and  then  melt  them  in  furnaces  built  and  pre- 
pared for  the  purpose.  In  these  furnaces  the  stones,  by  the 
violent  heat  of  the  fire,  are  melted  into  several  pieces  in  form 
like  great  sponges,  which  the  merchants  buy  by  truck  and 
exchange  of  other. wares,  and  export  them  to  Dicsearchea  and 
other  mart  towns.  Some  of  these  merchants  that  buy  of  these 
wares  cause  them  to  be  wrought  by  the  coppersmiths,  who 
beat  and  fashion  them  into  all  sorts  of  tools,  instruments, 
and  other  shapes  and  fancies ;  some  they,  neatly  beat  into  the 
shape  of  birds,  others  into  spades,  hooks,  and  other  sorts  of 
utensils,  all  which  are  transported  and  carried  about  into  sev- 
eral parts  of  the  world  by  the  merchants."  This  account  was 
written  in  the  first  century  before  the  Christian  era. 

Pliny  describes  the  various  kinds  of  iron  and  steel  which 
were  in  use  in  his  day,  the  first  century  after  Christ,  but  gives 
us  little  insight  into  the  methods  by  which  they  were  pro- 
duced. In  the  following  vague  description  he  seems  to  have 
intended  to  show  that  both  iron  and  steel  were  made  in  the 
same  furnace.  He  says :  "  There  is  a  great  difference,  too,  in 
the  smelting ;  some  kinds  producing  knurrs  of  metal,  which 
are  especially  adapted  for  hardening  into  steel,  or  else,  pre- 
pared in  another  manner,  for  making  thick  anvils  or  heads 
of  hammers.  But  the  main  difference  results  from  the  qual- 
ity of  the  water  into  which  the  red-hot  metal  is  plunged  from 
time  to  time.  The  water,  which  is  in  some  places  better  for 
this  purpose  than  in  others,  has  quite  ennobled  some  locali- 
ties for  the  excellence  of  their  iron,  Bilbilis,  for  example,  and 
Turiasso,  in  Spain,  and  Comum,  in  Italy,  and  this  although 
there  are  no  iron  mines  in  these  spots.  It  is  a  remarkable 
fact  that  when  the  ore  is  fused  the  metal  becomes  liquefied 
like  water,  and  afterwards  acquires  a  spongy,  brittle  texture. 
It  is  the  practice  to  quench  the  smaller  articles  made  of  iron 
with  oil,  lest  by  being  hardened  in  water  they  should  be  ren- 
dered brittle.  Iron  which  has  been  acted  upon  by  fire  is 
spoiled  unless  it  is  forged  with  the  hammer.  It  is  not  in  a 
fit  state  for  being  hammered  when  it  is  red  hot,  nor,  indeed, 
until  it  has  begun  to  assume  a  white  heat."  The  foregoing  is 
a  condensation  of  Pliny's  full  text,  to  be  found  in  Scrivenor. 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  75 

The  reference  in  Diodorus  to  iron  made  in  the  form  of 
" great  sponges,"  and  later  in  Pliny  to  iron  of  "a  spongy, 
brittle  texture,"  suggests  the  Catalan,  or  the  direct,  process 
of  manufacture.  In  describing  the  Biscayan  ferrerias,  which 
were  nothing  but  Catalan  forges,  M.  Pourcel,  from  whom  we 
have  already  quoted,  says :  "It  is  quite  evident  that  iron 
obtained  in  the  form  of  spongy  masses  from  an  ore  almost 
chemically  pure,  with  a  fuel  free  from  sulphur,  is,  by  its  mo- 
lecular constitution  as  much  as  by  its  chemical  composition, 
an  essentially  malleable  metal,  and  capable  of  being  kneaded, 
if  the  expression  may  be  used,  when  hot." 

In  Spain,  as  we  have  seen,  iron  and  steel  were  made 
many  centuries  before  Pliny's  time,  the  Catalan  forge,  or  a 
modification  of  it,  being  used,  and  the  product  being  either 
wrought  iron  or  steel.  The  Catalan  forge  differed  in  no  es- 
sential particular  from  the  ordinary  fire  of  a  blacksmith,  ex- 
cept that  it  had  a  sunken  hearth,  or  crucible.  The  Corsicaii 
forge,  which  also  existed  before  the  Christian  era,  was  a  modi- 
fication of  the  Catalan  forge.  The  blast  for  these  forges  is 
presumed  to  have  been  primarily  furnished  by  bellows  made 
of  goat  skins  or  the  skins  of  other  small  animals,  but  lar- 
ger Grecian  and  Roman  bellows  were  afterwards  substituted. 
Bauerman,  in  his  Treatise  on  the  Metallurgy  of  Iron,  cites  Fran- 
quoy  as  authority  for  the  statement  that  bellows  with  valves, 
"  single  acting  and  made  of  leather,"  were  introduced  by  the 
Romans  into  Gaul  in  the  fourth  century  of  the  Christian  era. 

Percy  copies  the  following  description  of  an  old  Catalan 
forge  in  Spain :  "In  1823,  at  Bielsa,  in  Aragon,  in  the  Span- 
ish Pyrenees,  some  charcoal  burners  discovered  in  a  forest  of 
silver  firs  a  small  circular  iron  furnace  only  2  feet  and  1.59 
inches  high.  The  lower  part  or  hearth  was  cylindrical  up  to 
the  height  of  about  11.81  inches  and  then  terminated  in  an 
inverted  truncated  cone ;  its  diameter  was  14.25  inches  at  the 
lower  and  1.69  inches  at  the  upper  part;  it  had  two  tuyere 
beds  at  11.81  inches  from  the  bottom.  Near  the  furnace  were 
found  two  crude  lumps  of  iron  in  the  state  in  which  they 
appeared  to  have  been  taken  out,  and  which  weighed  from 
30.9  pounds  to  35.3  pounds.  According  to  tradition  the  blast 
in  these  furnaces  was  produced  with  bellows  of  skin  worked 
by  hand.  Accumulations  of  ancient  slags  are  met  with  at 


76  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

high  elevations  in  the  Pyrenees,  far  from  any  water-course, 
and  which  doubtless  were  urged  by  a  blast  produced  by 
manual  labor."  Scrivenor  mentions  portable  forges  in  ancient 
France,  and  we  have  already  referred  to  the  movable  forges 
of  the  Forest  of  Dean.  These  references  suggest  the  portable 
blacksmith's  forge  of  the  present  day. 

M.  Pourcel  makes  the  following  reference  to  the  direct 
process  in  use  in  Biscay:  "The  ore  was  treated  in  hearths, 
sometimes  hollowed  out  alongside  of  the  mine  itself,  but  more 
frequently  established  in  the  middle  of  the  forests  which  sup- 
plied the  charcoal  and  on  the  banks  of  streams.  The  traces 
of  the  old  ferrerias,  which  are  still  met  with  in  considerable 
numbers,  situated  in  the  mountains,  near  the  mines,  from 
which  the  timber  has  disappeared,  on  the  banks  of  small  tor- 
rents, and  amongst  heaps  of  slag,  remain  the  witnesses  of  the 
old  iron  industry  of  Biscay.  The  work  was  carried  on  almost 
entirely  by  manual  labor,  and  without  doubt  pretty  nearly  in 
the  same  fashion  as  among  the  Kabyles  of  the  present  day." 

Much  light  is  thrown  upon  the  methods  of  manufacturing 
iron  which  prevailed  in  the  south  of  Europe  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Christian  era  by  the  discovery  in  1870  of  two  ancient 
bloomaries  or  melting  hearths  in  the  vicinity  of  Hiittenberg, 
in  Carinthia,  on  the  Hiittenberg  Railway.  The  place  where 
these  hearths  were  found  is  embraced  within  the  limits  of 
the  ancient  province  of  Noricum.  Maw  and  Dredge  describe 
the  hearths  as  follows : 

In  the  year  1870  a  most  interesting  discovery  was  made  during  the 
construction  of  the  Hiittenberg  Railway.  In  a  cutting  a  set  of  iron  melt- 
ing-hearths of  Roman  and  Celtic  times  was  found  6  feet  below  the  present 
surface  of  the  ground.  These  hearths  consist  of  two  holes  or  ditches,  the 
upper  one  being  supposed  to  have  served  as  a  calcining  kiln,  whilst  the 
lower  one  represents  the  smelting  furnace  proper.  These  hearths  were 
found  near  the  mines  of  spathic  ore  in  the  neighborhood  of  Huttenberg. 

The  calcining  hearth  is  fitted  with  a  layer  of  charcoal  1J  inches  thick, 
upon  which  a  10-inch  layer  of  clay  forms  the  inside  lining  of  the  hearth. 
This  lining  was  found  burnt  by  the  action  of  the  calcining  fire  to  a  depth 
of  4  inches.  The  depth  of  the  hearth  is  2  feet,  and  its  diameter  5  feet. 
The  second  or  smelting  hearth  is  placed  at  a  distance  of  16  feet  from  the 
former,  and  is  3  feet  deep  and  4  feet  wide.  The  lining  consists  of  a  layer 
of  6-inch  clay,  upon  which  a  fire-brick  mass,  consisting  of  clay  and  quartz, 
is  uniformly  spread  to  a  thickness  of  12  inches.  This  lining  is  burnt  and 
glazed  to  a  depth  of  3  inches  at  the  inner  side,  thus  recording  the  higher 
temperature  in  this  hearth  during  the  smelting  operation. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  77 

Both  hearths  are  filled  with  debris  of  burnt  clay  and  slag  crumbled 
down  from  the  walls  of  the  hearths,  which  seem  to  have  been  raised  one 
foot  above  the  surface  of  the  ground.  The  space  between  the  two  hearths 
is  paved  with  stones.  The  slag  contains  many  unburnt  pieces  of  charcoal. 
The  analysis  of  the  slag  has  proved  that  the  yield  of  the  spathic  ore  in  use, 
containing  .from  50  to  60  per  cent,  of  iron,  was  only  15  to  20  per  cent.  The 
blast  seems  to  have  been  furnished  by  bellows  from  the  top  of  the  furna- 
ces. A  Roman  cornice  has  been  found  near  the  smelting  hearth. 

These  discoveries  point  out  a  very  primitive  process  as  compared  with 
our  present  means  of  iron  smelting ;  but  centuries  vanished  before  any  real 
improvements  were  introduced.  Nevertheless  we  find  that  the  preparatory 
calcination  of  the  ore  previous  to  its  being  introduced  in  the  smelting  fur- 
nace is  a  very  ancient  mode  of  economizing  labor  and  fuel. 

An  analysis  of  the  piece  of  iron  found  under  the  Egyptian 
obelisk  which  was  removed  in  1880  to  New  York  shows  that 
it  must  have  been  made  by  the  direct  process,  and  probably 
in  a  Catalan  forge.  The  analysis,  which  was  made  for  Mr.  A. 
L.  Holley  by  Dr.  August  Wendel,  of  Troy,  is  here  preserved. 

Iron 98.738  !   Copper 0.102 

Carbon 0.521  I   Calcium 0.218 

Sulphur 0.009  j   Magnesium 0.028 

Silicon 0.017  |  Aluminum 0.070 

Phosphorus 0.048  I  Slag 0.150 

Manganese 0.116 

Nickel  and  cobalt 0.079  I           Total 100.096 

Mr.  Holley  says  that  a  clean  fracture  of  the  iron  was  sim- 
ilar to  that  of  puddled  steel,  and  mentions  the  further  fact 
that  the  small  amount  of  slag,  as  well  as  the  fine  fracture, 
indicates  frequent  reworking. 

It  is  not  definitely  known  whether  any  of  the  nations  of 
remote  antiquity  were  familiar  with  the  use  of  coal,  but  there 
is  some  evidence  to  show  that  it  was  known  in  the  days  of 
the  Greeks  and  Romans.  Rev.  Joseph  Hurst,  of  Wadhurst, 
England,  in  an  address  read  at  the  meeting  of  the  Royal 
Archaeological  Institute  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  at  New- 
castle, in  August,  1884,  says :  "  That  the  ancient  Greeks  were 
acquainted  with  stone  coal  is  evident  from  the  words  of  The- 
ophrastus,  an  author  who  lived  three  hundred  years  before 
Christ  (de  Lapidibus,  N.  16)  :  '  The  coal  commonly  so-called, 
which  is  dug  out  of  the  earth  for  man's  use,  is  of  an  earthy 
(or  stoney)  nature  ;  it  is  kindled  and  burnt  like  coal  (charcoal) . 
Of  this  (stone)  coal  workers  in  iron  make  use.'  Solinus  has 


78  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

also  been  quoted  for  the  use  of  stone-coal  amongst  the  Greeks, 
and  if  the  red-hot  stones  which,  according  to  Pliny,  were  used 
by  the  Gauls  for  smelting  copper  were  nothing  more  than 
stone-coal  their  efficacy  would  perhaps  be  rendered  more  in- 
telligible to  modern  men  of  science."  The  quotation  from 
Theophrastus  does  not  inform  us  in  what  country  coal  was 
found  in  his  day. 

The  compiler  of  the  paper  on  iron  in  Johnson's  Cyclopaedia 
says  of  the  Chalibees,  who  inhabited  a  part  of  the  country 
south  of  the  Black  sea,  that  they  "  first  used  coal."  He  forti- 
fies this  statement  in  the  following  words :  "  Their  iron  was 
made,  according  to  Aristotle,  (322  B.  c.,)  from  sand  ore  dug 
from  river  banks,  washed,  and  put  into  the  furnace  along  with 
the  stone  pyrimachus,  (fire-maker,)  that  is,  coal."  There  is  coal 
on  the  southern  shores  of  the  Black  sea,  between  the  ports 
of  Heraclea  and  Bardin,  which  is  now  mined  in  considerable 
quantities,  but  it  is  not  probable  that,  if  the  above  inference 
from  the  statement  of  Aristotle  be  correct,  the  Chalibees  ob- 
tained their  supply  from  this  source.  Nor  would  they  have 
been  likely  to  smelt  magnetic  sand  with  bituminous  coal. 

The  use  of  bituminous  coal,  or  pit-coal,  by  the  Romans 
during  their  occupation  of  Britain,  which  terminated  in  the 
year  411,  is  claimed,  but  this  use  must  have  been  very  lim- 
ited. Mr.  Meade  notes  the  use  of  coal  in  England  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  times.  He  says :  "  As  early  as  the  year  852  there  is  a 
record  of  the  abbey  of  Peterboro'  receiving  twelve  cart-loads 
of  fossil  or  pit  coal."  Mr.  Macadam  says  that  "coal  was 
early  known  in  Scotland,"  and  he  refers  to  a  charter  granted 
in  1291  to  the  abbot  and  convent  of  Dunfermline,  giving  them 
the  privilege  of  digging  coal.  In  the  thirteenth  century  coal 
was  sent  to  London  from  Newcastle  by  sea ;  hence  the  name 
which  is  still  in  use,  sea-coal.  The  Sorbs  and  Wends,  na- 
tive inhabitants  of  the  district  of  Zwickau,  in  Saxony,  are 
said  by  Herr  Pechar  to  have  been  familiar  with  the  use  of 
coal  probably  as  early  as  the  tenth  century.  Dr.  Wedding 
states  that  "an  insignificant  consumption  of  coal  in  Germa- 
ny for  domestic  purposes  and  brick  and  glass  works  can  be 
traced  with  certainty  as  far  back  as  the  beginning  of  the  four- 
teenth century."  The  beginning  of  coal  mining  in  Belgium 
is  said  by  Pechar  to  date  as  far  back  as  the  twelfth  century. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  79 

With  the  exception  of  the  Indian  and  Chinese  methods  of 
making  steel  the  ancient  processes  which  have  been  referred 
to  were  all  direct  processes,  the  iron  or  steel  being  obtained 
directly  from  the  ore.  The  furnaces,  whether  large  or  small, 
were  all  bloomaries,  because  the  product  derived  from  the 
heated  ore  was  obtained  in  the  form  of  a  lump  or  bloom  of 
malleable  iron  or  steel.  If  cast  iron  was  sometimes  obtained 
by  the  Mediterranean  nations,  or  by  Asiatic  and  African 
ironworkers,  little  evidence  exists  that  it  was  run  into  moulds 
for  the  production  of  useful  or  ornamental  castings.  The 
weakness  of  the  blast  furnished  by  goat  skins,  bamboo,  or  the 
early  leather  bellows  renders  it  highly  improbable  that  cast 
iron  was  obtained  by  any  of  the  more  ancient .  processes.  As 
we  approach  the  Christian  era  the  evidence  of  its  existence 
increases. 

Aristotle,  who  lived  in  the  fourth  century  before  Christ, 
has  left  an  account  of  the  manner  in  which  the  Greeks  of 
his  day  converted  wrought  iron  into  steel,  which  furnishes 
some  evidence  that  they  were  also  familiar  with  cast  iron. 
He  is  quoted  by  Day  as  follows :  "  Wrought  iron  itself  may 
be  cast  so  as  to  be  made  liquid  and  to  harden  again ;  and 
thus  it  is  they  are  wont  to  make  steel ;  for  the  scoria  of  iron 
subsides  and  is  purged  off  by  the  bottom ;  and  when  it  is 
often  defecated  and  made  clean  this  is  steel.  But  this  they 
do  not  often  because  of  the  great  waste  and  because  it  loses 
much  weight  in  refining ;  but  iron  is  so  much  the  more  excel- 
lent the  less  recrement  it  has."  The  quotatiori  from  Pliny  on 
a  preceding  page  contains  the  most  direct  evidence  we  have 
of  the  making  of  cast  iron  by  the  Romans.  It  has  been  sug- 
gested that  the  battering-ram  could  only  have  been  made  of 
cast  iron,  but  if  so  made  could  it  have  withstood  the  severe 
shocks  to  which  it  was  subjected  ? 

But,  if  the  Mediterranean  nations,  and  particularly  the 
Greeks  and  Romans,  knew  how  to  make  and  utilize  cast  iron, 
this  knowledge  virtually  became  one  of  the  lost  arts,  for  there 
is  no  authentic 'mention  of  cast  iron  having  been  made  in  the 
northern  and  western  parts  of  Europe  until  about  six  centu- 
ries ago,  and  if  the  Chinese,  the  Japanese,  and  the  people  of 
India  ever  possessed  the  art  they  kept  it  to  themselves  and 
made  but  little  use  of  it. 


80  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

MEDIAEVAL  AND  EAKLY  MODEKN  PROCESSES  IN  THE 
MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  AND  STEEL. 

FROM  the  first  to  the  eighth  century  of  the  Christian 
era  the  history  of  the  manufacture  of  iron  in  all  European 
countries  is  greatly  obscured,  and  the  processes  which  were 
in  operation  can  not  be  described.  In  Asia  and  Africa  the 
art  had  previously  received  less  and  less  attention  through  the 
gradual  transfer  of  political  power  and  of  civilization  to  the 
northern  shores  of  the  Mediterranean.  But  Greece,  which 
had  acquired  much  of  this  power  and  had  absorbed  most 
of  this  civilization,  had  in  turn  surrendered  her  leadership  to 
Rome,  and  in  the  fifth  century  after  Christ  Rome  herself  fell 
before  the  northern  barbarians.  Except  in  Spain,  where  the 
Visigoths  established  a  powerful  empire  in  the  fifth  century, 
under  which  the  arts  of  ancient  civilization  were  encouraged, 
the  iron  industry  is  nowhere  throughout  Europe  known  to 
have  flourished  from  the  time  when  Rome  commenced  her 
final  struggle  with  the  northern  invaders  down  to  about  the 
beginning  of  the  eighth  century.  At  this  time  we  begin  to 
hear  of  the  iron  industry  taking  a  fresh  start  in  many  Euro- 
pean countries,  experiencing  what  in  modern  phrase  we  term 
a  revival.  And  with  this  revival  we  hear  authentically  for 
the  first  time  of  the  wolf  furnace,  or  stuckofen,  in  Austria, 
Bohemia,  Germany,  Belgium,  and  other  Continental  countries. 
In  an  address  delivered  at  Liege,  Belgium,  in  1883,  M.  Ed.  de 
Laveleye,  of  that  city,  said  that,  "  in  the  eighth  century,  un- 
der Charlemagne,  appeared  the  furnace  called  the  fourneau  a 
masse,  or  stuckofen,  which  was  higher  than  the  old  furnaces, 
and  thus  allowed  a  greater  concentration  of  heat." 

The  wolf  furnace,  or  stuckofen,  was  a  high  bloomary,  and 
was  simply  an  enlargement  of  the  primitive  low  bloom  a- 
ries  or  forges.  Percy  says  that  the  stuckofen  "  is  only  a  Cata- 
lan furnace  extended  upwards  in  the  form  of  a  quadrangular 
or  circular  shaft.  The  Germans  call  it  stuck  or  wolfs  ofen 
because  the  large  metallic  mass  which  is  extracted  from  the 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  81 

bottom  is  termed  stuck  or  ivolf."  The  word  bloom  fully  ex- 
presses the  English  equivalent  of  both  words.  The  word  loup, 
or  loop,  which  is  applied  to  a  lump  of  imperfectly  worked 
iron,  is  identical  with  the  terms  stuck  and  wolf,  being  derived 
from  the  French  word  loup,  signifying  wolf.  Overman  says 
that  wolf  furnaces,  or  bloomaries,  of  which  there  yet  remain  a 
few  in  Hungary  and  Spain,  are  generally  from  10  to  16  feet 
high,  2  feet  wide  at  the  top  and  bottom,  and  about  5  feet  wide 
at  the  widest  part.  The  early  wolf  furnaces  were  not  more 
than  10  feet  high.  An  opening  in  the  front,  about  2  feet 
square,  called  the  breast,  was  kept  open  until  the  furnace  was 
heated,  when,  coincidently  with  the  closing  of  the  breast  with 
brick,  the  ore  and  charcoal  were  thrown  into  the  furnace  and 
the  blast  was  applied  from  "  at  least  two  bellows  and  nozzles, 
both  on  the  same  side."  The  product  was  a  mass,  or  sala- 
mander, of  mixed  iron  and  steel,  which  was  taken  out  of  the 
breast  and  reduced  under  the  tilt-hammer  to  blooms,  and  un- 
der smaller  hammers  to  bars  and  other  forms.  The  salaman- 
der, which  usually  weighed  from  400  to  700  pounds,  was  first 
cut  into  two  nearly  equal  parts,  which  were  called  stucke.  At 
Eisenerz,  in  Austria,  as  stated  by  Jars,  quoted  by  Percy,  "  the 
lump  was  first  cut  half  through  in  the  centre  with  hatchets 
by  two  men,  each  having  one.  It  was  afterwards  completely 
divided  by  means  of  wedges  and  large  hammers."  The  an- 
nual production  of  a  wolf  furnace  was  from  100  to  150  tons. 
Overman  further  says  :  "  By  this  method  good  iron  as  well  as 
steel  is  always  furnished  ;  in  fact  the  salamander  consists  of 
a  mixture  of  iron  and  steel ;  of  the  latter  skillful  workmen 
may  save  a  considerable  amount.  The  blooms  are  a  mixture 
of  fibrous  iron,  steel,  and  cast  iron.  The  latter  flows  into  the 
bottom  of  the  forge  fire,  in  which  the  blooms  are  reheated, 
and  is  then  converted  into  bar  iron  by  the  same  method 
adopted  to  convert  common  pig  iron.  If  the  steel  is  not 
sufficiently  separated  it  is  worked  along  with  the  iron."  At 
Soiling,  in  Carinthia,  a  wolf  furnace  was  built  in  1775  which 
was  provided  with  two  common  bellows  worked  by  water- 
wheels,  each  bellows  being  8  feet  long  and  3f  feet  broad. 

While  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  earliest  wolf  fur- 
naces were  blown  with  leather  bellows  it  is  not  known  when 
water-power  was  first  used  in  producing  the  blast  and  in  oper- 


82  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

ating  the  hammers.  Water-power  for  grinding  grain  is  said 
by  Knight,  in  his  Mechanical  Dictionary,  to  have  been  used 
about  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era.  In  Agricola's  De 
Re  Metattica,  printed  at  Basle  in  1556,  are  numerous  engrav- 
ings which  show  that  large  tilt-hammers  and  leather  bellows, 
operated  by  water-power,  were  used  in  the  manufacture  of  iron 
and  steel  in  Saxony  at  that  time.  In  Flower's  History  of  the 
Trade  in  Tin  will  be  found  two  very  interesting  illustrations 
of  the  manner  in  which  the  bellows  and  tilt-hammer  were 
operated  by  water-power  in  France  in  1714.  Prior  to  the  in- 
troduction of  water-power  bellows  were  doubtless  wholly  op- 
erated by  the  feet  or  hands. 

The  osmund  furnace,  which  is  said  by  Percy  to  have  been 
intermediate  between  the  Catalan  forge  and  the  stuckofen,  but 
which  had  a  much  wider  mouth  than  the  stuckofen,  was  for- 
merly in  use  in  Northern  Europe,  principally  for  smelting 
bog  or  lake  ore,  and  was  lately  in  use  in  Finland.  It  is  said 
by  Karsten,  in  his  Grundriss  der  Metallurgie,  printed  at  Bres- 
lau  in  1818,  to  have  been  in  use  in  Norway  and  Sweden  at 
that  date,  but  its  use  in  these  countries  has  now  been 'aban- 
doned. It  derived  its  name  from  the  Swedish  word  osmund, 
"  which  was  applied  to  the  bloom  produced  in  this  kind  of 
furnace."  Percy  reproduces  from  Swedish  sources  two  draw- 
ings of  an  osmund  furnace,  from  which  it  would  appear  that 
it  was  about  7  feet  high,  rectangular  in  shape,  with  an  open- 
ing or  breast  near  the  bottom  similar  to  that  of  the  stuckofen, 
and  was  blown  through  one  tuyere  with  two  ordinary  black- 
smith's bellows,  worked  with  treadles  by  a  woman's  feet.  The 
ore  used  in  Sweden  was  first  calcined  before  being  placed  in 
the  furnace,  wood  being  used  for  calcining  and  charcoal  for 
smelting.  The  product  was  good  malleable  iron,  which  was 
taken  out  of  the  breast  in  a  lump,  or  osmund.  Not  more  than 
li  tons  of  iron  could  be  produced  in  this  furnace  in  a  week. 

Percy  says:  "The  transition  from  the  old  bloomary  to 
the  modern  blast  furnace  was  very  gradual,  and  the  stuckofen 
is  the  final  development  of  the  furnaces  in  which  iron  in 
the  malleable  state  was  produced  direct  from  the  ore.  By  in- 
creasing the  dimensions  of  the  stuckofen,  especially  its  height, 
the  conditions  favorable  to  the  formation  of  cast  iron  are  ob- 
tained ;  and,  indeed,  in  the  stuckofen  cast  iron  was  generally, 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  83 

if  not  always,  produced  in  greater  or  less  degree,  to  the  annoy- 
ance of  the  smelter." 

Percy  further  says  that  the  stuckofen  was  gradually  super- 
seded by  the  blast  furnace,  the  first  furnace  which  replaced 
the  stuckofen  being  the  blauofen,  or  blue  oven.  He  says  that 
"  originally  there  was  no  essential  difference  between  them, 
these  names  being  applied  according  to  the  nature  of  the 
metal  which  they  yielded,  and  not  in  consequence  of  dif- 
ference of  construction,"  malleable  iron  being  obtained  with 
much  less  charcoal  than  was  used  when  cast  iron  was  desired. 
"  When  the  blauofen  was  used  as  a  stuckofen  it  was  only  neces- 
sary to  make  an  opening  in  the  fore  part  of  the  hearth  large 
enough  for  the  extraction  of  the  lump.  One  essential  condi- 
tion in  working  the  furnace  as  a  stuckofen  was  to  allow  the 
slag  free  escape  during  the  process,  so  that  the  lump  of  iron 
accumulating  in  the  hearth  might  never  be  covered  with 
slag,  and  so  be  protected  from  the  action  of  the  blast."  The 
blauofen,  which  is  not  entirely  extinct  on  the  Continent,  dates 
from  about  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century.  The 
flussofen  was  substantially  the  same  furnace  as  the  blauofen. 
Blast  furnace  may  properly  be  substituted  for  either  term,  al- 
though the  phrase  blast  furnace  means,  strictly  speaking,  the 
fully  developed  blauofen  or  flussofen.  Hochofen  was  another 
German  name  which  was  applied  to  the  blast  furnace,  and  it 
is  still  retained.  Karsten  says  that  in  1818  the  stuckofen  was 
no  longer  used  in  Germany,  except  at  Schmalkalden,  which 
is  a  town  in  Prussia.  He  says,  however,  that  many  stilckofen 
were  then  in  use  in  Hungary. 

It  has  been  stated  in  a  preceding  chapter  that  the  blast 
furnace  originated  in  the  Rhine  provinces  about  the  begin- 
ning of  the  fourteenth  century.  We  are  unable  to  trace  its 
existence  to  an  earlier  date  than  1340,  when  the  furnace  at 
Marche  les  Dames  in  Belgium  was  built.  It  was  many  years, 
however,  before  the  blast  furnace  was  generally  introduced 
on  the  Continent  or  in  England.  It  was  probably  not  intro- 
duced into  Saxony  until  1550.  Agricola,  who  was  a  native 
of  Saxony,  does  not  describe  it  in  his  valuable  work,  which 
was  first  printed  in  1530,  but  he  describes  the  stuckofen  and 
the  forges  for  refining  iron  and  producing  steel.  Percy  says 
that  Agricola  "  appears  to  have  been  acquainted  with  cast 


84  THE    MANUFACTUKE    OF 

iron,"  but  this,  as  has  already  been  shown,  could  have  been 
produced  by  the  stuckofen. 

The  Continental  nations  of  Europe  are  entitled  to  the 
credit  of  having  fully  developed  the  blast  furnace  from  the 
primitive  method  of  producing  iron  in  the  bloomary  or  Cat- 
alan forge.  The  virtual  perfection  of  the  blast  furnace  by 
the  Germans,  the  Belgians,  and  the  French  in  the  fifteenth 
and  sixteenth  centuries  marked  a  great  advance  in  the  art  of 
manufacturing  iron,  and  greatly  enlarged  the  uses  to  which 
iron  could  be  applied.  The  nations  which  have  been  men- 
tioned were  also  the  first  among  modern  nations  to  cast  iron 
in  moulds,  the  Germans  and  French  being  especially  noted  at 
an  early  day  for  the  artistic  excellence  of  their  iron  castings. 

The  Catalan  forge,  with  its  modifications,  continued  to  be 
used  during  the  period  covered  by  the  development  of  the 
blast  furnace,  and,  as  has  already  been  said,  it  is  still  in  use 
in  many  countries,  being  especially  adapted  to  the  conver- 
sion of  pure  ores  into  malleable  iron  of  superior  quality.  A 
modification  of  the  Catalan  forge,  called  the  German  bloom- 
ary, consisting  more,  however,  in  the  treatment  of  the  ore 
than  in  the  construction  of  the  hearth  and  its  connections, 
was  long  very  popular  in  Germany  and  the  United  States, 
but  it  has  now  been  almost  entirely  abandoned  in  both  these 
countries.  After  the  commencement  of  the  manufacture  of 
cast  or  pig  iron  forges  suited  to  the  conversion  of  this  prod- 
uct into  wrought  iron  became  necessary,  but  they  did  not 
differ  in  any  essential  details  of  construction  or  application 
from  the  Catalan  forge  and  the  refinery  forges  which  had  pre- 
viously been  found  necessary  in  connection  with  the  stuckofen. 
Refinery  forges  have  sometimes  been  called  bloomaries,  be- 
cause pig  iron  is  by  them  first  reduced  to  a  bloom  before  it  is 
still  further  refined;  but  properly  speaking  a  bloomary  is  a 
forge  that  converts  iron  ore  into  wrought  iron  by  the  direct 
process.  The  word  bloomary  is  of  Anglo-Saxon  origin,  the 
Anglo-Saxon  word  bloma,  from  which  it  is  derived,  meaning 
a  mass,  or  lump.  In  Doomsday-Book  the  expression,  bloma 
ferri,  occurs  several  times. 

In  The  Forest  of  Dean  Nicholls  quotes  a  most  interesting- 
description  of  the  blast  furnaces  and  refinery  forges  of  Eng- 
land in  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century.  It  has 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  85 

already  been  mentioned  that  the  blast  furnace  was  introduced 
into  England  from  the  Continent  about  the  beginning  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  The  author,  after  recording  events  which 
occurred  on  April  27,  1680,  a  little  more  than  two  hundred 
years  ago,  says :  "  The  mode  then  in  use  of  operating  upon 
the  iron  ore  as  described  in  manuscript  by  Dr.  Parsons  will 
be  found  in  Appendix  No.  5."  This  description  is  as  follows : 

After  they  have  provided  their  ore  their  first  work  is  to  calcine  it, 
which  is  done  in  kilns,  much  after  the  fashion  of  our  ordinary  lime  kilns ; 
these  they  fill  up  to  the  top  with  coal  and  ore  until  it  be  full,  and  so,  put- 
ting fire  to  the  bottom,  they  let  it  burn  till  the  coal  be  wasted,  and  then 
renew  the  kilns  with  fresh  ore  and  coal.  This  is  done  without  any  infu- 
sion of  mettal,  and  serves  to  consume  the  more  drossy  part  of  the  ore,  and 
to  make  it  fryable,  supplying  the  beating  and  washing,  which  are  to  no 
other  mettals ;  from  hence  they  carry  it  to  their  furnaces,  which  are  built 
of  brick  and  stone,  about  24  foot  square  on  the  outside,  and  near  30  foot  in 
height  within,  and  not  over  8  or  10  foot  over  where  it  is  the  widest,  which 
is  about  the  middle,  the  top  and  bottom  having  a  narrow  compass,  much 
like  the  form  of  an  egg.  Behind  the  furnace  are  placed  two  high  pair  of 
bellows,  whose  noses  meet  at  a  little  hole  near  the  bottom ;  these  are  com- 
pressed together  by  certain  buttons  placed  on  the  axis  of  a  very  large 
wheel,  which  is  turned  round  by  water,  in  the  manner  of  an  overshot  mill. 
As  soon  as  these  buttons  are  slid  off,  the  bellows  are  raised  again  by  a 
counterpoise  of  weights,  whereby  they  are  made  to  play  alternately,  the 
one  giving  its  blast  while  "the  other  is  rising. 

At  first  they  fill  these  furnaces  with  ore  and  cinder  intermixt  with 
fuel,  which  in  these  works  is  always  charcoal,  laying  them  hollow,  at  the 
bottom,  that  they  may  the  more  easily  take  fire ;  but  after  they  are  once 
kindled  the  materials  run  together  into  an  hard  cake  or  lump,  which  is 
sustained  by  the  furnace,  and  through  this  the  mettal  as  it  runs  trickles 
down  the  receivers,  which  are  placed  at  the  bottom,  where  there  is  a  pas- 
sage open,  by  which  they  take  away  the  scum  and  dross,  and  let  out  their 
mettal  as  they  see  occasion.  Before  the  mouth  of  the  furnace  lyeth  a  great 
bed  of  sand,  where  they  make  furrows  of  the  fashion  they  desire  to  cast 
their  iron.  Into  these,  when  the  receivers  are  full,  they  let  in  their  mettal, 
which  is  made  so  very  fluid  by  the  violence  of  the  fire  that  it  not  only  runs 
to  a  considerable  distance,  but  stands  afterwards  boiling  a  great  while. 
After  these  furnaces  are  once  at  work  they  keep  them  constantly  employed 
for  many  months  together,  never  Buffering  the  fire  to  slacken  night  or  day, 
but  still  supplying  the  waste  of  fuel  and  other  materials  with  fresh,  poured 
in  at  the  top. 

Several  attempts  have  been  made  to  bring  in  the  use  of  the  sea  coal  in 
these  workes  instead  of  charcoal;  the  former  being  to  be  had  at  an  easy 
rate,  the  latter  not  without  a  great  expence,  but  hitherto  they  have  proved 
ineffectual,  the  workmen  finding  by  experience  that  a  sea-coal  fire,  how 
vehement  soever,  will  not  penetrate  the  most  fixed  parts  of  the  ore,  by 
which  means  they  leave  much  of  the  mettal  behind  them  unmelted. 

From  these  furnaces  they  bring  the  sows  and  piggs  of  iron,  as  they  call 


86  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

them,  to  their  forges ;  these  are  two  sorts,  though  they  stood  together  under 
the  same  roof;  one  they  call  their  finery,  and  the  other  chafers ;  both  of 
them  are  upon  hearths,  upon  which  they  place  great  heaps  of  sea  coal,  and 
behind  them  bellows  like  those  of  the  furnaces,  but  nothing  near  so  large. 
In  such  finerys  they  first  put  their  piggs  of  iron,  placing  three  or  four  of 
them  together  behind  the  fire,  with  a  little  of  one  end  thrust  into  it, 
where  softening  by  degrees  they  stir  and  work  them  with  long  barrs  of 
iron  till  the  mettal  runs  together  in  a  round  masse  or  lump,  which  they 
call  an  half  bloome :  this  they  take  out,  and,  giving  it  a  few  strokes  with 
their  sledges,  they  carry  it  to  a  great  weighty  hammer,  raised  likewise  by 
the  motion  of  a  water-wheel,  where,  applying  it  dexterously  to  the  blows, 
they  presently  beat  it  into  a  thick  short  square  ;  this  they  put  into  the 
finery  again,  and,  heating  it  red  hot,  they  work  it  under  the  same  hammer 
till  it  comes  to  the  shape  of  a  bar  in  the  middle,  with  two  square  knobs  in 
the  ends ;  last  of  all  they  give  it  other  heatings  in  the  chaffers,  [chafery.j 
and  more  workings  under  the  hammer,  till  they  have  brought  their  iron 
into  barrs  of  several  shapes,  in  which  fashion  they  expose  them  to  sale. 

All  their  principal  iron  undergoes  the  aforementioned  preparations, 
yet  for  several  other  purposes,  as  for  backs  of  chimneys,  hearths  of  ovens, 
and  the  like,  they  have  a  sort  of  cast  iron,  which  they  take  out  of  the 
receivers  of  the  furnace,  so  soon  as  it  is  melted,  in  great  ladles,  and  pour  it 
into  the  moulds  of  fine  sand  in  like  manner  as  they  do  cast  brass  and 
softer  mettals ;  but  this  sort  of  iron  is  so  very  brittle  that,  being  heated, 
with  one  blow  of  the  hammer  it  breaks  all  to  pieces. 

John  Ray,  the  naturalist,  writing  a  Jittle  earlier,  in  1672, 
has  also  fully  described,  in  two  papers  appended  to  his  Col- 
lection of  English  Words'  the  blast  furnaces  and  forges  which 
existed  in  England  in  his  day.  "  This  account  of  the  whole 
process  of  the  iron  work,"  he  says,  "  I  had  from  one  of  the 
chief  ironmasters  of  Sussex,  my  honored  friend,  Walter  Bur- 
rell,  Esq.,  of  Cuckfield,  deceased."  We  give  below  a  literal 
copy  of  this  description. 

THE  MANNER  OP  THE  IRON  WORK  AT  THE  FURNACE. 

The  iron  mine  lies  sonfetimes  deeper,  sometimes  shallower,  in  the 
earth,  from  four  to  forty  [feet]  and  upward.  There  are  several  sorts  of 
mine,  some  hard,  some  gentle,  some  rich,  some  coarser.  The  ironmasters 
always  mix  different  sorts  of  mine  together,  otherwise  they  will  not  melt 
to  advantage.  When  the  mine  is  brought  in  they  take  small-coal  [char- 
coal] and  lay  a  row  of  it,  and  upon  that  a  row  of  mine,  and  so  alternately 
S.S.S.,  one  above  another,  and,  setting  the  coals  on  fire,  therewith  burn  the 
mine.  The  use  of  this  burning  is  to  modify  it,  that  so  it  may  be  broke  in 
small  pieces ;  otherwise  if  it  should  be  put  into  the  furnace  as  it  comes  out 
of  the  earth  it  would  not  melt,  but  come  away  whole.  Care  also  must  be 
taken  that  it  be  not  too  much  burned,  for  then  it  will  loop,  i.  e.,  melt  and 
run  together  in  a  mass.  After  it  is  burnt  they  beat  it  into  small  pieces 
with  an  iron  sledge,  and  then  put  it  into  the  furnace,  (which  is  before 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  87 

charged  with  coals,)  casting  it  upon  the  top  of  the  coals,  where  it  melts 
and  falls  into  the  hearth,  in  the  space  of  about  twelve  hours,  more  or  less, 
and  then  it  runs  into  a  son'. 

The  hearth,  or  bottom  of  the  furnace,  is  made  of  sandstone,  and  the 
sides  round,  to  the  height  of  a  yard,  or  thereabout ;  the  rest  of  the  furnace 
is  lined  up  to  the  top  with  brick.  When  they  begin  upon  a  new  furnace 
they  put  fire  for  a  day  or  two  before  they  begin  to  blow.  Then  they  blow 
gently  and  encrease  by  degrees  'till  they  come  to  the  height  in  ten  weeks 
or  more.  Every  six  days  they  call  a  founday,  in  which  space  they  make 
eight  tun  of  iron,  if  you  divide  the  whole  sum  of  iron  made  by  the  foun- 
days :  for  at  first  they  make  less  in  a  founday,  at  last  more.  The  hearth 
by  the  force  of  the  fire,  continually  blown,  grows  wider  and  wider,  so  that 
at  first  it  contains  so  much  as  will  make  a  sow  of  six  or  seven  hundred 
pound  weight ;  at  last  it  will  contain  so  much  as  will  make  a  sow  of  two 
thousand  pound'.  The  lesser  pieces,  of  one  thousand  pound,  or  under,  they 
call  pigs. 

Of  twenty-four  loads  of  coals  they  expect  eight  tun  of  sows :  to  every 
load  of  coals,  which  consists  of  eleven  quarters,  they  put  a  load  of  mine, 
which  contains  eighteen  bushels.  A  hearth  ordinarily,  if  made  of  good 
stone,  will  last  forty  foundays,  that  is,  forty  weeks,  during  which  time  the 
fire  is  never  let  go  out.  They  never  blow  twice  upon  one  hearth,  though 
they  go  upon  it  not  above  five  or  six  foundays.  The  cinder,  like  scum, 
swims  upon  the  melted  metal  in  the  hearth,  and  is  let  out  once  or  twice 
before  a  sow  is  cast. 

THE  MANNER  OF  WORKING  THE  IRON  AT  THE  FORGE  OR  HAMMER. 

In  every  forge  or  hammer  there  are  two  fires  at  least ;  the  one  they  call 
the  finery,  the  other  the  chafery.  At  the  finery,  by  the  working  of  the 
hammer,  they  bring  it  into  blooms  and  anconies,  thus : 

The  sow  they,  at  first,  roll  into  the  fire,  and  melt  off  a  piece  of  about 
three-fourths  of  a  hundred-weight,  which,  so  soon  as  it  is  broken  off,  is 
called  a  loop.  This  loop  they  take  out  with  their  shingling-tongs,  and  beat 
it  with  iron  sledges  upon  an  iron  plate  near  the  fire,  that  so  it  may  not  fall 
in  pieces,  but  be  in  a  capacity  to  be  carried  under  the  hammer.  Under 
which  they,  then  removing  it,  and  drawing  a  little  water,  beat  it  \jfith  the 
hammer  very  gently,  which  forces  cinder  and  dross  out  of  the  matter  ;  after- 
wards, by  degrees,  drawing  more  water,  they  beat  it  thicker  and  stronger 
'till  they  bring  it  to  a  bloom,  which  is  a  four-square  mass  of  about  two  feet 
long.  This  operation  they  call  shingling  the  'loop.  This  done,  they  imme- 
diately return  it  to  the  finery  again,  and,  after  two  or  three  heats  and  work- 
ings, they  bring  it  to  an  ancony,  the  figure  whereof  is,  in  the  middle,  a  bar 
about  three  feet  long,  of  that  shape  they  intend  the  whole  bar  to  be  made 
of  it ;  at  both  ends  a  square  piece  left  rough  to  be  wrought  at  the  chafery. 

Note.  At  the  finery  three  load  of  the  biggest  coals  go  to  make  one  tun 
of  iron.  At  the  chafery  they  only  draw  out  the  two  ends  suitable  to  what 
was  drawn  out  at  the  finery  in  the  middle,  and  so  finish  the  bar. 

Note  I.  One  load  of  the  smaller  coals  will  draw  out  one  tun  of  iron  at 
the  chafery.  2.  They  expect  that  one  man  and  a  boy  at  the  finery  should 
make  two  tuns  of  iron  in  a  week :  two  men  at  the  chafery  should  take 
up,  i  ?.,  make  or  work,  five  or  six  tun  in  a  week.  3.  If  into  the  hearth 


88  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

where  they  work  the  iron  sows  (whether  in  the  chafery  or  the  finery)  you 
cast  upon  the  iron  a  piece  of  brass  it  will  hinder  the  metal  from  working, 
causing  it  to  spatter  about,  so  that  it  can  not  be  brought  into  a  solid  piece. 

John  Hough  ton,  in  his  Husbandry  and  Trade  Improved, 
printed  in  1697,  calls  the  square  first  made  a  half  bloom  and 
the  bar  with  the  two  knobs  a  bloom,  the  greater  end  being 
called  the  mocket  head  and  the  smaller  the  ancony  end.  At 
the  third  heat,  there  being  five  heats  in  all,  the  ancony  end 
was  reduced  to  a  bar,  and  at  the  fourth  and  fifth  heats  the 
mocket  head  was  also  reduced. 

The  English  blast  furnaces  and  refinery  forges  which  have 
been  described  were  counterparts  of  Continental  furnaces  and 
forges  of  the  same  period.  On  the  Continent,  as  well  as  in 
England,  as  described  by  Dr.  Parsons,  various  castings  were 
made  direct  from  the  furnace,  which  for  this  reason  was  often 
called  a  foundry.  These  castings,  in  addition  to  the  articles 
mentioned  by  Dr.  Parsons,  embraced  such  domestic  utensils 
as  pots,  kettles,  skillets,  gridirons,  sad  irons,  andirons,  clock 
weights,  cog-wheels  for  mill  machinery,  grates,  stoves,  etc. 

After  coke  came  into  general  use  in  the  blast  furnaces  of 
Great  Britain  the  method  of  refining  iron  which  is  above  de- 
scribed was  somewhat  changed  in  that  country  in  details  but 
not  in  principle.  On  the  Continent,  however,  where  charcoal 
continued  to  be  the  only  fuel  used,  there  was  no  change  in 
the  method  of  refining  iron  until  the  puddling  furnace  was 
introduced,  after  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  in 
company  with  the  rolling  mill  for  rolling  bar  iron.  The  pud- 
dling furnace  was  introduced  into  Sweden,  at  Skebo,  and  into 
France,  at  Fourchambault,  about  1820  ;  into  Belgium,  at  Gri- 
vegnee,  by  Michael  Orban,  in  1821 ;  into  Moravia,  at  Witko- 
witz,  in  1829  ;  into  RhenisA  Prussia  about  1830  ;  into  West- 
phalia and  Upper  Silesia  about  1835  ;  and  into  Siegen  and 
the  Hartz  mountains  about  1840. 

The  erection  of  the  first  coke  blast  furnace  on  the  Conti- 
nent of  Europe  was  commenced  in  1823  at  Seraing,  in  Bel- 
gium, by  John  Cockerill,  an  Englishman  by  birth  but  a  Bel- 
gian citizen,  and  completed  in  1826,  when  it  was  successfully 
blown  in.  Other  coke  furnaces  in  Belgium  and  elsewhere  on 
the  Continent  soon  followed.  M.  Ed.  de  Laveleye,  of  Liege, 
says  that  in  1769  an  attempt  to  smelt  iron  ores  by  means  of 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  89 

coke  was  made  at  Juslenville,  near  Spa,  in  Belgium,  but  with- 
out success.  One  of  the  coke  furnaces  of  the  Hoerde  iron 
works  in  Germany  is  said  to  have  been  continuously  in  blast 
from  July  3,  1855,  to  May  29, 1874,  or  almost  nineteen  years. 

Wooden  bellows,  or  tubs,  as  a  substitute  for  leather  bel- 
lows in  connection  with  blast  furnaces  and  forges,  do  not  ap- 
pear to  have  been  used  in  England  in  the  seventeenth  centu- 
ry, although  said  to  have  been  invented  by  Hans  Lobsinger, 
of  Nuremberg,  in  Germany,  about  1550.  They  were  certainly 
used  in  Germany  eighty  years  later,  in  1630,  and  in  various 
parts  of  Great  Britain  in  the  eighteenth  century.  In  1750 
leather  bellows  were  used  to  blow  the  charcoal  furnaces  in 
Monmouthshire.  As  late  as  1809  leather  bellows  22  feet  long 
and  having  oak  planks  two  inches  thick  were  still  used  in 
blowing  some  Scotch  furnaces.  Both  leather  and  wooden  bel- 
lows have  been  used  in  blowing  the  furnaces  and  forges  of 
the  United  States,  and  the  use  of  wooden  bellows  had  not 
been  wholly  abandoned  in  this  country  as  late  as  1884. 

The  trompe,  or  water-blast,  is  said  to  have  been  invented 
in  Italy.  Its  use  has  been  mainly  confined  to  some  of  the 
charcoal  furnaces  and  Catalan  forges  of  Germany,  France, 
Spain,  and  Italy.  We  can  not  learn  that  it  was  ever  used 
in  any  part  of  Great  Britain.  Although  it  is  now  generally 
abandoned  it  may  yet  be  found  supplying  the  blast  for  a 
few  forges  on  the  Continent,  and  as  late  as  1890  it  had  not 
entirely  disappeared  in  the  southern  part  of  the  United 
States.  Professor  Lesley  described  in  1858,  in  the  Iron  Manu- 
facturers Guide,  the  water-blast  which  was  then  in  use  in  the 
Southern  States  in  connection  with  Catalan  forges.  He  said : 

The  use  of  the  water-blast  is  all  but  universal.  It  consists  of  a  box, 
say  5  by  2£  by  1£  feet  deep,  nearly  immersed  in  the  stream,  directly  under- 
neath the  forebay  or  flume.  The  water  rushes  down  into  its  upper  end 
from  the  forebay  through  a  wooden  pipe,  say  8  inches  square,  separated  in 
two  by  a  space  of  an  inch  or  two,  as  if  the  two  joints  of  a  stove-pipe  had 
parted  that  much.  Into  this  slit  air  is  sucked  by  the  falling  water  and 
driven  out  through  another  3-inch  tube  at  the  lower  end.  Inside  the  box, 
and  parallel  with  its  lid,  a  plank  called  the  "spatter-board"  is  set  a  few 
inches  below  the  first  tube.  The  water  escapes  from  a  hole  under  the 
water-level  at  the  lower  end  of  the  box.  This  apparatus  gives  a  cold,  damp 
blast,  with  a  great  waste  of  water,  but  one  that  is  very  uniform. 

The  origin  of  the  rolling  mill  for  rolling  iron  into  bars 


90  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

or  plates  is  not  free  from  doubt.  Scrivenor,  quoting  from 
Coxe's  Tour  in  Monmouthshire,  says  that  "  in  the  early  part  of 
the  eighteenth  century  John  Hanbury  invented  the  method 
of  rolling  iron  plates  by  means  of  cylinders."  Flower,  allud- 
ing to  the  manufacture  of  tin  plates  at  Pontypool,  says  that 
"the  discovery  of  sheet-iron  rolling  followed  in  1728,  an  in- 
vention claimed  alike  by  John  Payne  and  Major  Hanbury, 
and  it  was  in  a  great  measure  owing  to  this  improvement 
that  we  were  enabled  to  turn  the  tables  upon  Germany.  The 
tin-men  were  greatly  delighted  with  the  English  plates  ;  the 
color  was  better,  and  the  rolled  plates  were  found  to  be  more 
pliable  than  the  foreign  ones,  which  were  hammered."  The 
following  is  taken  from  Ure's  Dictionary  of  the  Arts :  "  In 
1728  John  Payne  invented  a  process  for  rolling  iron.  This 
seems  to  have  at  once  led  to  the  use  of  the  flat  or  sheet  rolls 
for  the  manufacture  of  iron  for  tin  plates  ;  but  it  is  very  re- 
markable that  no  further  progress  was  made  in  this  discov- 
ery of  rolling  iron  until  1783,  when  Henry  Cort  introduced  the 
grooved  rolls."  Percy  says :  "  With  respect  to  the  invention 
of  grooved  rolls  it  has  been  maintained  that  Cort's  claim  is 
invalidated  by  the  old  patent  granted  to  John  Payne  in  1728." 
It  is  certain,  however,  that  even  plain  rolls  did  not  come  into 
general  use  until  the  rolling  mill  had  been  perfected  by  Cort, 
the  refinery  fire,  the  leather  and  wooden  bellows,  the  tilting- 
hammer,  and  the  water-wheel  still  holding  their  place  in  the 
manufacture  of  finished  iron  on  the  Continent  and  in  Great 
Britain.  • 

Dr.  Johnson,  in  the  diary  of  his  tour  in  Wales  and  Mon- 
mouthshire in  1774,  says  that  at  an  iron  works  he  saw  "round 
bars  formed  by  a  notched  hammer  and  anvil,"  and  that  at  a 
copper  works  he  saw  "  a  plate  of  copper  put  hot  between  steel 
rollers  and  spread  thin."  The  whole  passage  is  as  follows: 

Wednesday,  August  3  [1774].  *  *  *  We  went  in  the  coach  to  Holy- 
well.  '  We  there  saw  a  brass  work,  where  the  lapis  calaminaris  is 
gathered,  broken,  washed  from  the  earth  and  the  lead,  though  how  the 
lead  was  separated  I  did  not  see  ;  then  calcined,  afterwards  ground  fine, 
and  then  mixed  by  fire  with  copper.  We  saw  several  strong  fires  with 
melting  pots,  but  the  construction  of  the  fire-places  I  did  not  learn.  At  a 
copper  work,  which  receives  its  pigs  of  copper,  I  think,  from  Warrington, 
we  saw  a  plate  of  copper  put  hot  between  steel  rollers  and  spread  thin.  I 
know  not  whether  the  upper  roller  was  set  to  a  certain  distance,  as  I  sup- 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  91 

pose,  or  acted  only  by  its  weight.  At  an  iron  works  I  saw  round  bars 
formed  by  a  notched  hammer  and  anvil.  There  I  saw  a  bar  of  about  half 
an  inch  or  more  square  cut  with,  shears  worked  by  water,  and  then  beaten 
hot  into  a  thinner  bar.  The  hammers,  all  worked  as  they  were  by  water, 
acting:  upon  small  bodies,  moved  very  quickly,  as  quick  as  by  the  hand.  I 
then  saw  wire  drawn  and  gave  a  shilling. 

We  find  by  an  examination  of  English  patents  that,  on 
November  21,  1728,  John  Payne,  an  Englishman,  obtained  a 
patent  for  various  improvements  in  the  manufacture  of  iron, 
which  consisted  in  part  in  the  application  of  certain  ashes, 
salt,  etc.,  to  pig  or  sow  iron  while  in  the  refinery  fire,  "  which 
will  render  the  same  into  a  state  of  malleability,  as  to  bear 
the  stroke  of  the  hammer,  to  draw  it  into  barrs  or  other  forms 
att  the  pleasure  of  the  workman,  and  those  or  other  barrs  be- 
ing heated  in  the  said  melted  ingredients  in  a  long  hott  arch 
or  cavern,  as  hereafter  is  described ;  and  those  or  other  barrs 
are  to  pass  between  two  large  mettall  rowlers,  (which  have 
proper  notches  or  furrows  upon  their  surfass,)  by  the  force 
of  my  engine  hereafter  described,  or  other  power,  into  such 
shapes  and  forms  as  shall  be  required."  Plain  rolls  for  roll- 
ing sheet  iron  for  tin  plates  are  not  referred  to.  Other  patents 
were  subsequently  granted  in  England  for  the  invention  of 
rolls  of  various  forms  for  rolling  bar  iron.  In  1759  a  patent 
was  granted  to  Thomas  Blockley  for  rolls  which  "are  to  be 
turned  and  formed  of  the  requisite  shape  so  as  to  shape  the 
article  as  intended."  In  1779  a  patent  was  granted  to  William 
Bell  for  rolls  which  "haye  designs  sunk  in  their  surfaces." 

In  John.  Houghton's  Husbandry  and  Trade  Improved,  print- 
ed in  1697,  he  speaks  of  slitting  and  rolling  mills  as  "late 
improvements."  This  is  the  earliest  reference  we  have  found 
to  a  rolling  mill  in  connection  with  a  slitting  mill.  Such  use 
of  a  rolling  mill  would  probably  precede  its  use  for  any  oth- 
er purpose  in  connection  with  the  manufacture  of  iron.  In 
Flower's  History  of  the  Trade  in  Tin  the  manufacture  of  tin 
plates  at  Mansvaux,  in  Alsace,  in  1714,  is  fully  described,  and 
it  is  noticeable  that  the  sheet  iron  then  used  was  hammered. 
This  description,  which  is  illustrated,  sustains  the  claim  that 
either  John  Payne  or  Major  Hanbury  was  fourteen  years 
later,  in  1728,  the  first  person  to  roll  sheet  iron,  an  innovation 
which  presumptively  grew  out  of  the  use  of  the  rolling  mill 
in  the  manufacture  of  nail  plates  as  early  as  1697,  as  recorded 


92  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

by  John  Houghton,  and  which  innovation  probably  followed 
Payne's  invention  of  grooved  rolls,  patented  in  1728. 

We  quote  below  John  Houghton 's  statement  concerning 
the  rolling  mill  just  as  we  find  it  under  the  date  of  Friday, 
October  22, 1697,  in  Bradley's  edition  of  Husbandry  and  Trade 
Improved,  printed  at  London  in  1727.  After  describing  "  how 
the  sows  and  pigs  of  iron  are  prepared  for  bars  and  drawn 
into  such  "  in  the  refinery  forges,  "  which  are  of  two  sorts," 
the  "  finery  "  and  the  "  chafery,"  he  tells  us  in  the  following 
words  how  the  bars  are  converted  into  nail  rods. 

Whereof  those  they  intend  to  be  cut  into  rods  are  carried  to  the  slit- 
ting mills,  where  they  first  break,  or  cut  them  cold,  with  the  force  of  one  of 
the  wheels,  into  short  lengths ;  then  they  are  put  into  a  furnace  to  be  heat- 
ed red-hot  to  a  good  height,  and  then  brought  singly  to  the  rollers,  by 
which  they  are  drawn  even,  and  to  a  greater  length;  after  this  another 
workman  takes  them  whilst  hot,  .and  puts  them  through  the  cutters,  which 
are  of  divers  sizes,  and  may  be  put  on  or  off  according  to  pleasure.  Then 
another  lays  them  straight  also  whilst  hot,  and  when  cold  binds  them  also 
into  faggots,  and  then  they  are  fit  for  sale. 

And  thus  I  have  given  an  account  of  the  iron  works  of  Staffordshire  from 
the  oar  to  the  slitting  mills,  as  they  are  now  exercised  in  their  perfection, 
the  improvement  whereof  we  shall  find  very  great  if  wre  look  back  upon 
the  methods  of  our  ancestors  that  made  iron  in  foot-blasts  or  bloomeries,  by 
means  of  treading  the  bellows,  by  which  way  they  could  make  but  one  little 
lump  or  bloom  of  iron  in  a  day,  not  a  hundred  weight,  leaving  as  much  iron 
in  the  slag  as  they  got  out.  Whereas  now  they  will  make  two  or  three  tons 
of  cast  iron  in  twenty-four  hours ;  leaving  the  slag  sp  poor  that  the  found- 
ers can  not  melt  them  again  to  profit,  not  to  mention  again  the  vast  advan- 
tage they  have  from  the  new  invention  of  slitting  mills  for  cutting  their  bars 
into  rods,  above  what  they  had  antiently. 

Houghton's  whole  account,  from  which  the  above  extract 
is  taken,  is  entitled  by  him  "a  note  of  late  improvements." 

In  the  English  pamphlet  on  the  British  iron  trade,  printed 
between  1725  and  1731,  and  already  referred  to,  there  is  con- 
clusive proof  that  down  to  that  time  all  bar  iron  was  ham- 
mered. We  quote  literally  from  this  pamphlet  as  follows: 

Pig-iron  is  brought  from  the  furnace  to  the  forge ;  and  there  by  being 
melted  and  digested  in  the  fire  becomes  a  fixt  and  malleable  substance  ;  and 
by  repeated  heats  in  the  fire,  and  repeated  impressions  of  the  hammer,  is 
beaten  out  into  long  bars  or  palasades,  and  upon  that  account  is  termed 
bar-iron.  Furnaces  and  forges  are  comprehended  under  one  common  name 
of  iron  works.  Bar-iron  is  of  several  sorts,  distinguished  by  particular  names 
according  to  its  dimensions  and  uses.  The  two  most  general  are  merchant- 
bar  and  mill  bar:  The  one  being  such  shaped  iron  as  is  usually  imported 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  93 

by  the  merchant,  about  inch  and  half  or  two  inches  broad  and  one-third 
thick,  and  squares  of  different  sizes.  The  other  such  as  is  proper  for  the 
slitting  or  rowling-mill,  of  double  dimensions  to  the  former.  The  slitting 
and  rowling-mills  are  water-engines,  whose  use  is  to  reduce  bar-iron  into 
small  rods  or  thin  plates,  in  order  to  save  the  expence  of  charcoal  and  hu- 
man labour. 

A  letter  of  inquiry  to  Professor  Richard  Akerman,  of  the 
School  of  Mines,  Stockholm,  Sweden,  requesting  such  informa- 
tion as  might  be  in  his  possession  concerning  the  origin  of 
the  slitting  mill  and  the  rolling  mill,  was  answered  as  follows  : 

That  slitting  mills  were  in  use  before  rolling  mills  is  most  probable  and 
nearly  certain.  At  the  beginning  of  this  century  there  could  still  be  found 
slitting  mills  in  which  hammered*  but  not  rolled  iron  was  slit.  But  all  slit- 
ting mills  were  not  made  on  the  principle  of  rolling  mills ;  many  of  them 
more  resembled  scissors. 

The  first  publication  about  rolling  mills  in  this  country  which  I  have 
seen  or  know  about  is  De  Ferro,  by  Emanuel  Swedenborg,  which  was  print- 
ed in  1734.  Swedenborg  speaks  both  about  slitting  machines  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  scissors,  cutting  three  rods  at  a  time,  and  about  slitting  mills  in 
connection  with  rolling  mills.  He  describes  slitting  mills  in  Sweden,  in 
the  Liege  district  of  Belgium,  in  Germany,  and  in  England;  but  he  does 
not  say  a  single  word  about  where  he  thinks  they  originated.  Swedenborg 
docs  not  say  anything  about  grooved  rolls.  In  fact  he  only  describes  rolling 
mills  in  connection  with  slitting  mills.  On  page  253  he  speaks  about  Swed- 
ish rolling  mills  at  Wedewag,  Avesta,  and  Stjernsund. 

On  the  contrary,  Christopher  Polhem,  in  his  Patriotiska  Testamente, 
which  was  printed  in  1761,  ten  years  after  his  death  when  he  was  90  years 
old,  speaks  about  rolling  mills  as  such,  both  for  plates  and  bar  iron.  He 
says,  in  chapter  14,  "much  time  and  labor  can  be  saved  by  good  rolling 
mills,  because  a  rolling  mill  can  produce  10  to  20  and  still  more  bars  at  the 
same  time  which  is  wanted  to  tilt  only  one  bar  with  the  hammer.  Thus 
very  thin  bar  iron  can  be  made  which  is  useful  for  hoops  and  mountings 
of  several  kinds.  Steel  also  can  be  rolled  out  for  knife  blades,  etc.,  which 
easily  can  be  finished  by  the  blacksmith.  The  rolls  can  be  so  made  that 
the  knife-steel  becomes  broad  and  thin  on  both  sides,  or  gets  the  same 
shape  as  blades  of  common  swords,  and  these  can  be  cut  lengthwise  in  two 
parts,  thus  giving  suitable  material  for  knives,  etc.  Rolls  also  can  be  made 
for  producing  quadrangular,  round,  and  half-round  bars,  not  only  for  iron 
but  also  for  steel,  as  for  all  kinds  of  files  which  easily  can  be  finished  by 
the  blacksmith." 

In  the  next  chapter  Polhem  describes  the  manner  of  making  wrought- 
iron  rolls  covered  with  steel.  Further  on  in  the  same  chapter  he  speaks  of 
rolls  for  rolling  sheets :  "  As  such  rolls  commonly  have  a  length  of  three 
quarters,  it  follows  that  their  diameter  must  be  rather  large ;  but,  as  thick 
rolls  in  comparison  with  slender  ones  have  only  a  small  effect  in  stretch- 
ing, broad  sheets  can  not  be  rolled.  If  not,  two  slender  wrought-iron  rolls 
are  put  between  the  two  thick  cast-iron  rolls,  which  prevent  the  slender 
rolls  from  yielding.  Such  rolls  I  have  put  up  at  Stjernsund  after  having 


94  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

tried  their  effect  by  experiments  on  a  small  scale."  After  mentioning  eco- 
nomical difficulties,  in  consequence  of  which  he  was  obliged  to  leave  un- 
used both  this  and  other  expensive  machines,  he  concludes  with  the  fol- 
lowing words :  "  Yet  I  willingly  grant  to  others,  who  perhaps  will  live  dur- 
ing more  happy  times,  what  I  have  not  got  opportunity  to  use  for  myself." 

Polhem  says  nothing  about  the  time  when  he  put  up  the  said  rolling 
mill,  but,  if  you  remember  that  he  was  born  1661  and  died  1751,  it  seems 
probable  that  it  must  have  been  during  the  first  decades  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Christopher  Polhem  was  the  greatest  mechanical  genius  Sweden 
has  ever  produced,  but  whether  he  was  the  very  first  inventor  of  rolling 
mills  it  is  impossible  for  me  to  say.  At  any  rate  he  ought  to  be  mentioned 
among  the  inventors  of  rolling  mills.  In  fact,  Polhem  must  be  said  to  be 
the  real  inventor  of  what  you  call  the  Lauth  rolling  mill.  The  only  differ- 
ence is  that  Polhem  used  four  rolls  above  each  other,  two  small  between 
two  large  ones. 

Gabriel  Polhem,  a  son  of  Christopher  Polhem,  in  the  Transactions  of 
the  Royal  Swedish  Academy  of  Sciences  for  1740,  gives  a  description  of  a  roll- 
ing mill,  "  the  invention  of  my  father,"  which  he  (Gabriel  Polhem)  put  up 
at  the  mint  in  Ca^el,  Germany.  He  says  that  the  officers  of  the  mint  did 
not  believe  that  a-  rolling  mill  could  be  of  any  use  for  the  mint,  but  he  was 
in  1733  ordered  by  King  Frederick  to  put  it  up,  and  it  proved  most  useful 
for  getting  more  uniform  thickness  and  weight  of  the  coins.  From  this 
and  other  expressions  in  the  description  it  is  quite  clear  that  the  said  roll- 
ing mill  was  the  very  first  put  up  at  any  mint,  but  not  long  afterwards  a 
rolling  mill  also  was  put  up  at  the  Swedish  mint. 

This  communication  from  Professor  Akerman  is  a  very 
important  one,  especially  in  its  reference  to  the  use  of  the 
rolling  mill  for  rolling  plate  and  bar  iron  before  1751,  the 
year  of  the  death  of  Christopher  Polhem.  It  proves  that 
plate  and  bar  iron  were  rolled  before  Cort's  day,  but  probably 
not  until  after  the  rolling  mill  had  been  used  as  early  as  1697 
in  connection  with  the  slitting  mill,  as  recorded  by  Houghton, 
nor  until  after  the  invention  of  sheet-iron  rolling  in  1728, 
with  which  the  names  of  Payne  and  Hanbury  are  associated. 
The  germ  of  the  great  invention  by  which  iron  and  steel  are 
rolled  into  so  many  and  into  such  infinitely  small  and  won- 
derfully large  shapes  in  our  day  most  likely  originated  with 
the  man  who  added  the  rolling  mill  to  the  slitting  mill,  and 
after  a  laborious  investigation  we  regret  that  we  can  not  give 
his  name  nor  definitely  fix  the  date  of  his  invention.  Cort, 
however,  is  entitled  to  the  credit  of  so  improving  upon  all 
previous  suggestions  that  the  rolling  mill  in  his  hands  be- 
came a  successful  invention  for  the  numerous  and  important 
purposes  to  which  it  is  now  applied. 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  95 

The  methods  of  producing  steel  'which  were  in  use  before 
Huntsman  succeeded  in  making  crucible  steel  at  Sheffield, 
in  1740,  to  which  event  we  have  referred  in  the  chapters 
relating  to  Great  Britain,  were  substantially  only  three  in 
number.  The  first  method  was  either  closely  allied  to  or  was 
wholly  identical  with  the  direct  or  Catalan  process  for  pro- 
ducing iron,  the  product  being  variously  known  as  natural 
steel,  raw  steel,  or  German  steel.  The  second  method  was  the 
Indian  process  for  converting  small  pieces  of  bar  iron  into 
steel  in  crucibles,  the  product  being  wootz,  or  Indian  steel. 
The  third  method  was  the  cementation  process,  in  which  bars 
of  the  best  iron  were  carbonized  by  being  heated  in  contact 
with  charcoal,  the  result  being  blister  steel  and  shear  steel. 
Steel  produced  by  the  cementation  process  is  also  known  as 
German  steel,  because  much  attention  was  long  given  to  its 
production  by  Germany.  All  these  methods  are  yet  in  use. 
A  Chinese  method  heretofore  mentioned  we  pass  over. 

The  first  method,  which  requires  the  use  of  a  forge,  and 
which  was  originally  applied  to  iron  ore  but  afterwards  to  pig 
iron,  is  most  observed  in  Germany  and  Austria.  In  Styria 
the  finest  tool  steel  is  still  produced  by  the  old  Frischen  proc- 
ess, which  consists  in  refining  the  excellent  Styrian  pig  iron 
in  small  charcoal  open  hearths.  The  process  is  essentially 
primitive.  Professor  Tunner  has  given  a  complete  account 
of  the  older  open-hearth  methods,  which  has  been  quoted  by 
Dr.  Percy.  The  small  works  for  the  production  of  Styrian 
open-hearth  steel  are  distributed  along  the  banks  of  rivers 
in  the  Styrian  Alps,  each  of  the  works  being  located  at  a  fall 
of  the  river  capable  of  developing  about  50  horse-power. 

Allied  to  the  above-mentioned  process  of  making  steel  in 
open  hearths  which  is  still  practiced  in  Germany  and  Austria 
is  the  following  ancient  German  method,  described  by  Agric- 
ola  in  his  De  EG  Metallica,  printed  about  the  middle  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  We  use  Day's  translation. 

Make  choice  of  iron  which  is  apt  to  melt,  and  yet  hard,  and  may  easily 
be  wrought  with  the  hammer ;  for  although  iron,  which  is  made  of  vitriolic 
ore,  may  melt,  yet  it  is  soft,  or  brittle,  or  eager.  Heat  a  parcel  of  such  iron 
red-hot,  and  cut  it  into  small  pieces,  and  then  mix  it  with  a  sort  of  stone 
which  easily  melts ;  then  set  in  the  smith's  forge,  or  hearth,  a  crucible,  or 
dish  of  crucible  metal,  a  foot  and  a-half  broad,  and  a  foot  deep ;  fill  the  dish 
with  good  charcoal,  and  compass  the  dish  about  with  loose  stones,  to  keep 


96  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

in  the  mixture  of  stone  and  pieces  of  iron.  As  soon  as  the  coal  is  thorough- 
ly kindled,  and  the  dish  red-hot,  give  the  blast,  and  let  the  workman  put  on 
by  little  and  little  all  the  mixture  of  iron  and  stone  he  designs.  When  it  is 
melted,  let  him  thrust  into  the  middle  of  it  three  or  four  or  more  pieces  of 
iron,  and  boil  them  therein  five  or  six  hours  with  a  brisk  fire  ;  and,  putting 
in  his  rod,  let  him  often  stir  the  melted  iron,  that  the  pieces  may  imbibe  the 
smaller  particles  of  the  melted  iron,  which  particles  consume  and  thin  the 
grosser  ones  of  the  iron  pieces,  acting  like  a  ferment  to  them,  and  making 
them  tender.  Let  the  workman  now  take  one  of  the  pieces  out  of  the  fire 
and  put  it  under  the  great  hammer,  to  be  drawn  out  into  bars  and  wrought ; 
and  then,  hot  as  it  is,  plunge  it  into  cold  water.  Thus  tempered,  let  him 
again  work  it  on  the  anvil,  and  break  it;  and  viewing  the  fragments,  let 
him  consider  whe thermit  looks  like  iron  in  any  part  of  it,  or  be  wholly  con- 
densed and  turned  into  steel.  Then  let  the  pieces  be  all  wrought  into  bars ; 
which  done,  give  a  fresh  blast  to  the  mixture,  adding  a  little  fresh  matter  to 
it,  instead  of  that  which  had  been  drunk  up  by  the  pieces  of  iron,  which 
will  refresh  and  strengthen  the  remainder,  and  make  still  purer  the  pieces  of 
iron  again  put  into  the  dish  ;  every  which  piece  let  him,  as  soon  as  it  is  red- 
hot,  beat  into  a  bar  on  the  anvil,  and  cast  it,  hot  as  it  is,  into  cold  water. 
And  thus  iron  is  made  into  steel,  which  is  much  harder  and  whiter  than 
iron. 

Mr.  Thomas  Turner  defined  cemented  steel  as  follows  in 
a  lecture  delivered  at  Birmingham,  England,  in  1889 : 

For  the  preparation  of  best  steel  for  cutlery,  tools,  and  similar  purposes, 
it  is  still  customary  to  adopt  the  cementation  process,  though  the  amount 
of  steel  so  produced  is  relatively  growing  less  and  less  each  year.  This 
process  has  been  used  for  several  centuries  at  least,  and  the  origin  of  the 
method  is  unknown.  Selected  bars  of  Swedish  or  other  best-quality  iron 
are  placed  in  closed  chests  and  heated  in  contact  with  charcoal  for  about 
a  week  or  ten  days,  depending  on  the  temper  which  is  desired.  By  this 
means  the  wrought  iron,  which  was  originally  almost  entirely  free  from 
carbon,  takes  up  sufficient  of  that  element  to  give  the  metal  its  character- 
istic properties.  Usually  some  15  tons  of  iron  are  converted  in  one  opera- 
tion, and  12  tons  of  good  coal  are  consumed.  The  metal  so  obtained  is  cov- 
ered on  its  surface  with  small  blisters,  formed  by  the  reducing  action  of 
carbon  on  the  small  quantities  of  intermingled  slag  in  the  iron,  and  hence 
is  called  blister- steel.  It  is  brittle  in  this  state  and  crystalline  in  fracture. 
Blister-steel  is  broken  up,  piled,  re-heated,  and  hammered,  and  so  forms 
shear-steel,  which  was  originally  used  for  making  wool-shears,  but  is  now 
used  for  many  other  purposes.  The  milder  varieties  of  blister-steel  are 
used  in  producing  shear-steel,  while  those  which  are  a  little  richer  in  car- 
bon are  re-heated  and  hammered  in  the  same  way ;  but  the  operation  is 
repeated  a  second  time,  and  double  shear-steel  is  produced.  Shear-steel, 
though  admirably  suited  for  many  purposes,  is  not  quite  uniform  in  char- 
acter, and  this  uniformity  can  only  be  ensured  by  melting  the  metal,  so  as 
to  allow  it  to  mix  thoroughly  together,  and  to  eliminate  the  slag  and  other 
intermingled  impurities.  Melted  steel  was  unknown  before  the  days  of 
Huntsman.  [This  is  disproved  by  Reaumur.  See  page  97.— J.  M.  S.] 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  97 

Percy  says  of  the  cementation  process,  by  which  until  in 
late  years  most  of  the  steel  of  Europe  and  America  was  pro- 
duced :  "  This  is  an  old  process,  but  little  is  known  of  its  his- 
tory. According  to  Beckmann  there  is  no  allusion  to  it  in  the 
writings  of  the  ancients.  It  was  well  described  by  Reaumur 
in  1722,  in  his  admirable  treatise  on  the  art  of  converting 
bar  iipn  into  steel."  Landrin  says:  " Germany  is  also  the  first 
country  where  it  was  proposed  to  cement  iron.  Thence  this 
art  came  to  France,  and  was  introduced  at  Newcastle-on-Tyne 
long  before  it  was  known  at  Sheffield,  the  present  centre  of 
that  fabrication."  The  word  cementation  is  derived  from  the 
former  use  with  charcoal  of  chemical  compositions  called  ce- 
ments, which  were,  however,  not  needed. 

Professor  Griiner,  of  Paris,  mentions  that  Reaumur,  in  his 
celebrated  treatise,  The  Art  of  Converting  Iron  into  Steel,  pub- 
lished in  1722,  says,  on  page  250,  that  "  iron  is  transformed 
into  steel  by  immersing  it  for  a  short  time  in  melted  cast 
iron,"  and  adds  that  "this  process  of  steel  manufacture  is  in 
use  in  some  countries,  and  has  already  been  described  by  Va- 
naccio  in  his  Pyrotechnie,  book  I.,  chapter  7."  Reaumur  says 
in  addition,  on  page  256,  that  steel  may  be  obtained  "  by  fus- 
ing iron  scrap  in  cast  iron,"  and  that  he  has  obtained  " forge" 
steel  by  thus  mixing' with  cast  iron  sometimes  one-fourth  and 
sometimes  one-third  of  wrought  iron.  The  immersion  of 
wrought  iron  in  a  bath  of  cast  iron  is  only  a  form  of  cemen- 
tation, the  absorption  of  carbon  being  the  main  object  sought. 
The  most  common  form  of  cementation,  however,  has  been 
described  on  a  preceding  page  by  Mr.  Turner. 

In  Dud  Dudley's  Mettallum  Martis,  published  in  1665,  and 
to  be  found  reprinted  verbatim  in  the  Journal  of  the  Iron  and 
Steel  Institute  for  1872,  the  author  gives  the  following  descrip- 
tion of  the  early  English  foot-blasts  and  of  the  later  English 
high  bloomaries,  or  stilckofen,  which  latter  he  says  were  still 
in  existence  in  England  at  the  time  his  account  was  written. 
With  this  extract  from  Dud  Dudley's  valuable  treatise  we 
close  our  citations  from  the  old  writers  on  the  mediaeval  and 
early  modern  processes  of  making  iron  and  steel. 

Let  us  but  look  back  unto  the  making  of  iron,  by  our  ancestors,  in  foot 
blasts,  or  bloomeries,  that  was  by  men  treading  of  the  bellows,  by  which 
way  they  could  make  but  one  little  lump  or  bloom  of  iron  in  a  day,  not  100 


98  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

weight,  and  that  not  fusible,  nor  fined,  or  malliable,  untill  it  were  long  burn- 
ed and  wrought  under  hammers,  and  whose  first  slag,  sinder  or  scorius, 
doth  contain  in  it  as  much,  or  more,  iron  then  in  that  day  the  workman  or 
bloomer  got  out,  which  slag,  scorius,  or  sinder  is  by  our  founders  at  furna- 
ces wrought  again,  and  found  to  contain  much  yron  and  easier  of  fusion 
than  any  yron  stone  or  mine  of  yron  whatsoever,  of  which  slag  and  sinders 
there  is  in  many  countryes  millions  of  tuns  and  oaks  growing  upon  them, 
very  old  and  rotten. 

The  next  invention  was  to  set  up  the  bloomeries  that  went  by  water,  for 
the  ease  of  the  men  treading  the  bellows,  which  being  bigger,  and  the  water- 
wheel  causing  a  greater  blast,  did  not  onely  make  a  greater  quantity  of  iron, 
but  also  extracted  more  iron  out  of  .the  slag  or  sinder,  and  left  them  more 
poorer  of  iron  then  the  foot-blasts,  so  that  the  founders  cannot  melt  them 
again,  as  they  do  the  foot  blast  sinders  to  profit :  yet  these  bloomeries  by 
water  (not  altogether  out  of  use)  do  make  in  one  day  but  two  hundred 
pound  weight  of  iron,  or  there  abouts,  neither  is  it  fusible,  or  malliable,  but 
is  unfined  untill  it  be  much  burned,  and  wrought  a  second  time  in  fire. 

With  the  exception  of  the  blast  furnace,  which  was  slowly 
developed  from  the  high  bloomary,  and  of  the  cementation 
process  for  producing  steel,  which  doubtless  originated  during 
the  period  when  the  blast  furnace  was  developed,  no  impor- 
tant improvement  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  and  steel  oc- 
curred from  the  revival  of  the  iron  industry  in  Europe  about 
the  beginning  of  the  eighth  century  until  we  reach  the  series 
of  improvements  and  inventions  in  the  eighteenth  century 
which  have  already  been  fully  noticed  in  the  chapters  relat- 
ing to  the  British  iron  industry,  a  period  of  a  thousand  years. 
It  is  about  one  hundred  years  since  Henry  Cort  prominently 
brought  the  rolling  mill  and  the  puddling  furnace  to  the  at- 
tention of  the  ironmaking  world,  and  scarcely  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years  since  coke  was  first  successfully  used  in  the  blast 
furnace  and  steel  was  first  made  in  England  in  crucibles.  It 
is  not  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  since  the  high  bloomary,  or 
stuckofen,  was  in  use  in  England  for  the  production  of  wrought 
iron  direct  from  the  ore. 

Since  Huntsman's  invention,  which  still  gives  us  our  best 
steel,  there  have  been  many  other  improvements  in  the  man- 
ufacture of  steel,  and  more  recently  there  has  been  a  very 
great  relative  increase  in  its  production  and  use  as  compared 
with  iron,  until  it  has  become  a  hackneyed  expression  that 
this  is  the  age  of  steel.  While  this  is  true  in  the  sense  that 
steel  is  replacing  iron,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  the  ancients 
made  steel  of  excellent  quality,  and  that  the  art  of  manufac- 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  99 

turing  it  was  never  lost  and  has  never  been  neglected.  The 
swords  of  Damascus  and  the  blades  of  Toledo  bear  witness 
to  the  skill  in  the  manufacture  of  steel  which  existed  at  an 
early  day  in  both  Asia  and  Europe.  German  steel  was  widely 
celebrated  for  its  excellence  during  the  middle  ages,  and  steel 
of  the  same  name  and  made  by  the  same  processes  still  occu- 
pies an  honorable  place  among  metallurgical  products.  Even 
Huntsman's  invention  of  the  art  of  making  the  finest  quality 
of  steel  in  crucibles,  while  meritorious  in  itself,  was  but  the 
reproduction  and  amplification  in  a  modern  age  of  a  process 
for  manufacturing  steel  of  equal  quality  which  was  known  to 
the  people  of  India  thousands  of  years  ago. 

The  ancient  and  the  early  European  processes  for  the 
manufacture  of  both  iron  and  steel  do  not  compare  unfavora- 
bly with  those  of  modern  times  in  the  quality  of  the  products 
they  yielded.  Modern  processes  excel  those  which  they  have 
replaced  more  in  the  uniformity  and  quantity  of  their  prod- 
ucts than  in  their  quality.  The  Germans  once  had  a  furnace 
for  making  small  quantities  of  iron  by  toilsome  manual  la- 
bor, one  name  for  which,  bauernofen,  indicates  that  it  was  used 
by  farmers  when  they  were  not  engaged  in  cultivating  or 
securing  their  crops.  This  was  the  blo^seo/en,  or  osmund  fur- 
nace. In  the  present  age  mechanical  skill  of  the  highest  or- 
der unites  with  the  subtle  operations  of  the  chemist  to  produce 
iron  and  steel  in  such  quantities  and  with  such  uniformity 
of  product  as  to  amaze  not  only  the  modern  farmer,  who 
does  not  make  a  pound  of  iron,  but  also  the  student  of  his- 
tory, the  political  economist,  the  practical  statesman,  and  the 
man  of  all  wisdom. 


100  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER   IX. 

FIRST  ATTEMPT  BY  EUROPEANS   TO  'MANUFACTURE 
IRON    IN   THE   UNITED   STATES. 

HAVING  traced  in  preceding  pages,  as  briefly  as  the  im- 
portance of  the  subject  would  permit,  the  early  history  of  the 
manufacture  of  iron  in  the  older  countries  of  the  world,  espe- 
cially in  Great  Britain,  our  mother  country  in  this  great  in- 
dustry as  well  as  in  national  life,  we  now  cross  the  Atlantic  to 
the  shores  of  that  part  of  the  New  World  which  comprises  the 
United  States.  In  no  other  part  of  the  American  continent 
has  the  manufacture  of  iron  ever  risen  to  the  dignity  of  a 
great  national  industry,  and  only  in  Canada  of  all  the  politi- 
cal divisions  of  North  or  South  America  outside  of  the  United 
States  has  a  serious  effort  ever  been  made  to  develop  native 
iron  resources.  Indeed  it  is  only  in  northern  latitudes  in  both 
hemispheres  that  iron  is  made  in  large  or  even  in  noticeable 
quantities.  This  fact  is  only  in  part  due  to  geological  rea- 
sons. Climate  and  race  tendencies  have  had  much  to  do  with 
the  development  of  the  metallurgical  and  all  other  productive 
industries  in  tjie  belt  of  the  earth's  surface  above  alluded  to, 
and  which  may  well  be  called  the  ironmaking  belt.  It  is  here 
that  we  find 

That  vigor  of  the  northern  brain 

Which  nerves  the  world  outworn. 

This  vigor  is  largely  due  to  stimulating  climatic  condi- 
tions. The  same  gentle  poet  from  whom  we  have  just  quoted 

tells  us  that 

There's  iron  in  our  northern  winds ; 
Our  pines  are  trees  of  healing. 

It  would  not  be  profitable  to  inquire  minutely  whether 
the  mound-builders  or  any  other  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  the 
United  States,  or  the  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  any  other  part 
of  the  American  continent,  possessed  a  knowledge  of  the  use 
and  consequently  of  the  manufacture  of  iron.  It  may  be 
said  with  positiveness  that  it  has  not  been  proved  that  they 
possessed  this  knowledge  even  in  the  slightest  degree,  if  we 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  101 

except  the  very  rare  use  of  meteoric  iron.  Antiquarians  have 
not  neglected  a  subject  of  so  much  importance,  but  their  re- 
searches have  produced  only  negative  results.  Rude  hatchets 
and  other  small  implements  of  iron  have  been  found  in  sit- 
uations which  give  color  to  the  theory  that  they  may  have 
been  of  aboriginal  origin  and  may  have  been  made  from  iron 
ore,  but  the  weight  of  much  concurrent  testimony  is  wholly 
against  this  supposition.  Foster,  in  his  Prehistoric  Races  of 
the  United  States  of  America,  says  that  "no  implement  of  iron 
has  been  found  in  connection  with  the  ancient  civilizations 
of  America."  He  fully  establishes  the  fact  that  the  mound- 
builders  manufactured  copper  into  various  domestic  and  war- 
like implements,  but  adds  that  the  Indians  of  North  America 
did  not  use  copper  in  any  form,  although  those  of  Central 
and  South  America  did.  Prescott,  the  historian  of  the  con- 
quest of  Mexico  and  Peru,  says  that  the  native  inhabitants 
of  these  countries,  who  were  at  the  time,  of  the  conquest  the 
most  advanced  in  all  the  arts  of  civilization  of  the  immediate 
predecessors  of  the  white  race  in  North  and  South  America, 
were  unacquainted  with  the  use  of  iron,  copper  serving  them 
as  a  substitute.  Our  North  American  Indians  were  certainly 
unacquainted  with  the  use  of  iron  when  the  Spaniards,  the 
English,  the  Dutch,  and  other  Europeans  first  landed  on  the 
Atlantic  coast.  Cotton  Mather,  in  his  Life  of  Eliot,  says  that 
among  the  Indians  of  New  England  "stone  was 'used,  instead 
of  metal,  for  their  tools,"  and  other  writers  bear  like  testimo- 
ny concerning  all  our  Indians.  The  Rev.  Dr.  Joseph  Dod- 
dridge,  in  his  Notes  on  the  Settlement  and  Indian  Wars  of  the 
Western  Parts  of  Virginia  and  Pennsylvania,  published  in  1824, 
expresses  the  following  opinions  :  "  At  the  discovery  of  Amer- 
ica the  Indians  knew  nothing  of  the  use  of  iron.  Any  peo- 
ple who  have  ever  been  in  the  habit  of  using  iron  will  be 
sure  to  leave  some  indelible  traces  of  its  use  behind  them  ; 
but  the  aborigines  of  this  country  have  left  none." 

With  regard  to  the  use  of  meteoric  iron  by  the  aboriginal 
inhabitants  of  the  American  continent  Professor  F.  W.  Put- 
nam, of  Harvard  University,  the  archaeologist,  writes  us  as 
follows :  "  I  have  found  in  the  ancient  mounds  of  Ohio  mass- 
es of  meteoric  iron  and  various  implements  and  ornaments 
made  by  hammering  pieces  of  meteoric  iron.  This  native 


102  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

iron  the  ancient  people  of  Ohio  used  the  same  as  they  did 
native  copper,  native  silver,  and  native  gold,  simply  as  a 
malleable  metal.  None  of  our  peoples,  I  am  confident,  un- 
derstood smelting  iron  or  in  any  way  manufacturing  it  from 
iron  ore.  The  Greenland  Eskimos  made  knives  and  other 
weapons  from  the  native  iron  found  in  Greenland,  but  always 
by  hammering,  not  by  melting  and  casting.  After  contact 
with  Europeans  the  Indian  tribes  obtained  iron  in  various 
forms,  and  in  due  time  learned  to  heat  it  and  shape  it  as  a 
blacksmith  would  do." 

In  the  absence  of  any  positive  information  confirming 
the  use  of  any  other  than  meteoric  iron  by  any  of  the  abo- 
riginal inhabitants  of  America  the  interesting  fact  may  be 
stated  that  iron  has  recently  been  made  in  Cherokee  county 
in  the  western  part  of  North  Carolina  by  some  members  of 
the  remnant  of  a  bancl  of  Cherokee  Indians.  They  used  the 
primitive  Catalan  forge,  which  was  introduced  into  North 
Carolina  by  the  early  white  settlers,  and  from  the  iron  so 
produced  they  made  various  tools  and  implements.  The 
Cherokees  when  discovered  by  Europeans  were  among  the 
most  advanced  of  all  the  North  American  Indians  in  the  arts 
which  pertain  to  a  civilized  mode  of  life. 

North  Carolina  first  gave  to  Europeans  the  information 
that  iron  ore  existed  within  the  limits  of  the  United  States. 
The  discovery  was  made  in  1585  by  the  expedition  fitted 
out  by  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  and  commanded  by  Ralph  Lane, 
which  made  on  Roanoke  Island  in  that  year  the  first  attempt 
to  plant  an  English  settlement  on  the  Atlantic  coast.  In  his 
History  of  American  Manufactures  Bishop  states  that  "  Lane 
and  his  men  explored  the  country  along  the  Roanoke  and  on 
both  sides  from  Elizabeth  river  to  the  Neuse."  Thomas  Har- 
iot,  the  historian  of  the  colony  and  the  servant  of  Sir  Walter, 
says  that  "  in  two  places  of  the  countrey  specially,  one  about 
foure  score  and  the  other  sixe  score  miles  from  the  fort  or 
place  where  wee  dwelt,  wee  founde  neere  the  water  side  the 
ground  to  be  rockie,  which,  by  the  triall  of  a  mineral  man, 
was  founde  to  hold  iron  richly.  It  is  founde  in  manie  places 
of  the  eountrey  else.  I  know  nothing  to  the  contrarie  but 
that  it  male  bee  allowed  for  a  good  marchantable  commod- 
itie,  considering  there  the  small  charge  for  the  labour  and 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  103 

feeding  of  men  ;  the  infinite  store  of  wood  ;  the  want  of  wood 
and  deerenesse  thereof  in  England ;  and  the  necessity  of  bal- 
lasting of  shippes."  But  no  attempt  was  made  to  utilize  this 
discovery,  as  the  colonists  were  in  search  of  gold  and  not 
iron.  In  1586  they  quarreled  with  the  Indians  and  returned 
to  England.  A  permanent  settlement  in  North  Carolina  was 
not  effected  until  many  years  afterwards.  Iron  ore  was  not 
mined  in  North  Carolina  nor  was  iron  made  within  its 
boundaries  until  after  many  of  the  other  colonies  had  com- 
menced to  make  iron. 

In  1607  the  first  permanent  English  colony  in  the  New 
World  was  founded  at  Jamestown  in  Virginia  by  the  Virginia 
Company  of  London,  and  on  the  10th  of  April  in  the'  follow- 
ing year,  1608,  the  company's  ship,  commanded  by  Captain 
Christopher  Newport,  sailed  from  Jamestown  loaded  with  iron 
ore,  sassafras,  cedar  posts,  and  walnut  boards,  and  on  the  20th 
of  May  it  arrived  in  England.  From  Neill's  history  of  the 
company  we  learn  that  the  iron  ore  was  smelted,  and  "  seven- 
teen tons  of  metal  were  sold  at  ,£4  per  ton  to  the  East  India 
Company."  This  was  undoubtedly  the  first  iron  made  by 
Europeans  from  American  ore.  In  1610  Sir  Thomas  Gates, 
who  had  spent  some  time  in  Virginia,  testified  before  the 
council  of  the  company,  at  London,  that  there  were  divers 
minerals,  especially  "  iron  oare,"  in  Virginia,  lying  upon  the 
surface  of  the  ground,  some  of  which  ore,  having  been  sent 
home,  had  been  found  to  yield  as  good  iron  as  any  in  Europe. 
The  iron  here  referred  to  was  that  which  had  been  sold  to 
the  East  India  Company. 

In  1619  the  Virginia  Company  sent  to  Virginia  a  num- 
ber of  persons  who  were  skilled  in  the  manufacture  of  iron, 
to  "set  up  three  iron  works"  in  the  colony.  The  enterprise 
was  undertaken  in  that  year  and  located  on  Falling  creek,  a 
tributary  of  the  James  river,  which  it  enters  on  its  right  or 
southern  bank  in  Chesterfield  county,  about  seven  miles  be- 
low Richmond  and  about  sixty-six  miles  above  Jamestown. 
In  1620,  as  stated  by  Beverley  in  his  History  of  Virginia,  "an 
iron  work  at  Falling  creek  in  James  river"  was  set  up, "where 
they  made  proof  of  good  iron  oar  and  brought  the  whole  work 
so  near  a  perfection  that  they  writ  word  to  the  company  in 
London  that  they  did  not  doubt  but  to  finish  the  work  and 


104  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

have  plentiful  provision  of  iron  for  them  by  the  next  Eas- 
ter," in  the  spring  of  1621.  But  neither  plentiful  provision 
nor  any  other  provision  of  iron  was  made  on  Falling  creek 
in  1621,  owing  to  the  death  of  three  of  the  master  workmen 
who  had  the  enterprise  in  charge.  In  July  of  that  year  the 
company  sent  over  John  Berkley,  "formerly  of  Beverstone 
Castle,  Gloucester,  a  gentleman  of  an  honorable  family,"  to 
take  charge  of  the  work.  He  was  accompanied  by  his  son 
Maurice  and  twenty  experienced  workmen.  In  a  letter  from 
the  company  to  the  colonial  authorities,  dated  July  25,  1621, 
it  was  stated  that  "  the  advancement  of  the  iron  works  we 
esteeme  to  be  most  necessarie,  by  perfecting  whereof  we  es- 
teerne  the  plantation  is  gainer.  We  therefore  require  all  pos- 
sible assistance  be  given  to  Mr.  Berkley  now  sent,  and  all  fur- 
therance to  his  ship,  especially  good  entertainment  at  their 
landinge."  On  the  12th  of  August  of  the  same  year  the  com- 
pany, in  a  communication  to  the  authorities,  wrote  respecting 
the  iron  works  and  the  saw  mills  which  had  been  projected : 
"We  pray  your  assistance  in  the  perfectinge  of  these  two 
workes ;  the  profitt  will  redound  to  the  whole  collony,  and 
therefore  it  is  necessary  that  you  extend  your  authoritie  to 
the  utmost  lymitts  to  enforce  such  as  shall  refuse  the  help  to 
a  business  so  much  tending  to  the  generall  good."  On  the 
5th  of  December,  1621,  the  company  again  wrote,  enjoining 
"  all  possible  dilligence  and  industrious  care,  to  further  and 
accomplish  those  great  and  many  designes  of  salte,  sawdnge 
mills,  and  iron."  In  January,  1622,  the  authorities  wrote  to 
the  company  that  "  the  care  we  have  taken  of  the  iron  workes 
we  reserve  to  be  reported  by  Mr.  Thresurer  and  Mr.  Barkley 
himself."  On  June  10th  the  company  wrote  of  "  the  good 
enterance  wch  we  have  understood  you  have  made  in  the  iron 
works  and  other  staple  comodities,"  and  added,  "  let  us  have 
at  least  by  the  next  returnes  some  good  quaiititie  of  iron  and 
wyne." 

But  before  this  last  letter  was  written  the  colony  had  been 
visited  by  the  Indian  massacre  of  the  22d  of  March,  1622,  in 
which  John  Berkley  and  all  his  workmen  were  slain  and  the 
works  were  destroyed.  These  works  were  not  rebuilt.  Bev- 
erley,  writing  in  1705,  says  that  the  project  of  iron  works  on 
Falling  creek  "  has  never  been  set  on  foot  since,  till  of  late ; 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  105 

but  it  has  not  had  its  full  trial."  In  1624  the  charter  of  the 
Virginia  Company  was  revoked.  And  thus  disastrously  end- 
ed the  first  attempt  by  Europeans  to  make  iron  in  America. 

The  "  good  enterance  "  mentioned  in  the  company's  letter 
of  June  10th  doubtless  referred  to  satisfactory  progress  in  the 
construction  of  the  works,  but  there  is  no  positive  evidence 
that  iron  was  ever  made  on  Falling  creek.  Letters  from  Mr. 
John  Berkley  had  promised  that  "  the  company  might  relye 
upon  good  quantities  of  iron  made  by  him  "  by  Whitsuntide 
of  1622,  but  the  massacre  occurred  before  that  time.  Bever- 
ley,  however,  in  referring  to  the  Falling  creek  enterprise,  says 
that  "  the  iron  proved  reasonably  good ;  but  before  they  got 
into  the  body  of  the  mine  the  people  were  cut  off  in  that  fa- 
tal massacre."  The  ore  on  Falling  creek  is  described  as  hav- 
ing been  brown  in  color.  It  wras  bog  ore.  Mr.  Berkley  de- 
clared that  "  a  more  fit  place  for  iron  workes  than  in  Vir- 
ginia, both  for  woods,  water,  mynes,  and  stone,"  was  not  to 
be  found ;  and  Mr.  George  Sandys  wrote  to  the  company  on 
the  3d  of  March,  1622,  that  Falling  creek  was  fitted  for  mak- 
ing iron  "  as  if  nature  had  applyed  herself e  to  the  wish  and 
dictation  of  the  workeman  ;  where  also  were  great  stones, 
hardly  seene  elsewhere  in  Virginia,  lying  on  the  place,  as 
though  they  had  beene  brought  thither  to  advance  the  erec- 
tion of  those  workes." 

We  have  failed  to  discover  whether  the  works  on  Falling 
creek  embraced  a  blast  furnace  and  refinery  or  a  bloomary 
only,  but  the  frequent  references  to  building  stone  in  connec- 
tion with  the  works,  and  the  length  of  time  and  the  number 
of  workmen  occupied  in  their  erection,  lead  to  the  inference 
that  a  furnace  formed  part  of  the  enterprise.  It  also  seems 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  phrase,  "  three  iron  works," 
already  quoted  in  connection  with  the  plans  of  the  Virginia 
Company,  meant  a  blast  furnace,  a  finery,  and  a  chafery, 
these  works  being  used  together  in  England  at  that  day. 

No  further  attempt  to  make  iron  in  Virginia  appears  to 
have  been  made  for  many  years  after  the  failure  on  Falling 
creek.  In  a  pamphlet  entitled  A  Perfect  Description  of  Vir- 
ginia, published  at  London  in  1649,  it  is  stated  that  "  an  iron 
work  erected  would  be  as  much  as  a  silver  mine."  In  1650 
another  pamphlet,  quoted  by  Bishop,  says  of  iron  ore  in  Vir- 


106  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF  , 

ginia :  "  Neither  does  Virginia  yield  to  any  other  province 
whatsoever  in  excellency  and  plenty  of  this  oare."  In  1687, 
and  again  in  1696,  Col.  William  Byrd,  the  first  of  the  name 
in  Virginia,  set  on  foot  the  project  of  reviving  the  works  011 
Falling  creek,  but  it  was  not  carried  into  execution.  This  is 
the  project  referred  to  by  Beverley  in  1705  as  not  having  had 
"  its  full  trial" 

To  encourage  manufactures  in  Virginia  the  exportation 
from  the  colony  of  hides,  wool,  and  iron  was  forbidden  by  an 
act  of  the  assembly  in  1662,  upon  penalty  of  one  thousand 
pounds  of  tobacco  for  every  hide  exported,  fifty  pounds  of 
tobacco  for  every  pound  of  wool  exported,  and  ten  pounds  of 
tobacco  for  every  pound  of  iron  exported.  The  iron  here  re- 
ferred to  was  doubtless  crude,  or  cast,  iron.  This  restriction 
was  removed  in  1671,  "no  successe  answering  the  conceived 
hopes  and  apparent  losses  accruing  to  all  inhabitants  by  the 
refusall  of  those  concerned  to  buy  the  commodity es  aforesaid," 
but  it  was  reimposed  in  1682.  We  can  not  learn  that  during 
the  time  covered  by  these  enactments,  and  down  to  the  be- 
ginning of  the  eighteenth  century,  there  was  a  single  pound 
of  iron  manufactured  in  Virginia.  Notwithstanding  the  en- 
couragement given  by  the  Virginia  Company  and  by  some 
succeeding  colonial  authorities  to  the  establishment  of  do- 
mestic manufactures  the  settlers  of  Virginia  for  a  hundred 
years  after  the  settlement  at  Jamestown  devoted  themselves 
almost  entirely  to  the  raising  of  tobacco  and  other  agricul- 
tural products. 

Mr.  R.  A.  Brock,  of  Richmond,  a  gentleman  who  has  de- 
voted much  time  to  historical  research  concerning  Virginia, 
and  who  is  at  present  corresponding  secretary  and  librarian 
of  the  Virginia  Historical  Society,  has  recently  published  an 
account  of  some  of  the  iron  enterprises  in  the  colony  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  from  which  the  following  interesting  ref- 
erence to  the  site  of  the  iron  works  on  Falling  creek  is'  taken. 

The  Falling  creek  tract  fell  to  the  possession  of  Col.  Archibald  Gary 
some  time  prior  to  the  Revolutionary  war.  Upon  it  he  erected  his  well- 
known  seat,  the  name  of  which  became  in  the  records  of  the  period  a  part 
and  parcel  of  his  personal  designation  as  Archibald  Gary  of  Ampthill.  He 
erected  a  new  iron  works  on  Falling  creek.  "  He  purchased  pigs  of  iron 
from  Rappahannock,  Patowmack,  and  Maryland.  Of  these  he  made  bar 
iron.  The  profits,  however,  were  so  small  that  he  abandoned  his  forge  and 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  107 

converted  hi.s  pond  to  the  use  of  a  grist  mill  about  1760.  Nobody  then 
knew  of  any  iron  mine  convenient  to  Falling  creek." 

Falling  creek  is  about  a  mile  below  Ampthill.  Its  waters  still  furnish 
motive  power  to  a  grist  mill  owned  by  Mr.  H.  Carrington  Watkins,  and 
known  as  the  Ampthill  mill.  The  creek  is  but  an  insignificant  rivulet 
above  the  mill,  but  some  twenty  yards  below  it  widens  into  a  handsome 
little  lake,  and  some  quarter  of  a  mile  thence  empties  into  James  river. 

About  sixty  yards  from  the  mill,  on  the  western  bank  of  the  creek  and 
Hearing  the  river,  the  writer  picked  up  several  small  pieces  of  furnace 
cinder,  presumptive  relics  of  the  iron  works  of  1622.  The  bluff  adjacent 
and  incumbent  has,  it  is  evident,  from  repeated  washings  of  the  soil,  near- 
lyg  covered  the  exact  original  site. 

On  the  opposite  side  of  the  creek,  and  to  the  east  of  the  mill,  is  clearly 
indicated  the  site  of  the  forge  of  Archibald  Gary.  Here  we  found  numer- 
ous pieces  of  slag  or  cinder,  some  of  them  fully  a  hundred  pounds  in 
weight,  and  an  irregular  area,  an  acre  or  more  in  extent,  covered  with 
finely-broken  or  comminuted  charcoal  to  the  depth  of  fully  two  feet;  a 
memorial  of  the  fuel  used. 

We  were  informed  that  about  half  a  mile  below  Falling  creek,  near 
James  river,  there  is  a  low  piece  of  ground  known  to  this  day  as  Iron  Bot- 
tom, where  may  be  found  plentifully  what  is  known  as  bog  iron  on  the  sur- 
face. It  will  be  recollected  that  the  iron  ore  already  cited  as  being  men- 
tioned by  Sir  Thomas  Gates  was  described  as  "  lying  on  the  surface  of  the 
ground."  We  have  also  learned  since  our  visit  to  Falling  creek  that  at  a 
point  upon  its  banks,  distant  inward  about  two  miles  from  the  site  of  the 
iron  works,  there  are  numerous  pits  some  five  or  six  feet  in  depth,  which  it 
is  evident,  from  the  mineral  character  of  their  surroundings,  furnished  the 
crude  ore  for  the  original  and  ill-starred  works. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  Virginia  became  very  promi- 
nent in  the  manufacture  of  iron,  fulfilling  in  an  eminent 
degree,  although  at  a  late  day,  the  expectations  which  had 
been  entertained  of  its  iron-producing  capabilities  by  the 
enterprising  but  unfortunate  Virginia  Company  of  London. 


108  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER   X. 

BEGINNING  OF  THE  MANUFACTUKE  OF  IRON  IN  THE 
NEW  ENGLAND  COLONIES. 

ALTHOUGH  iron  ore  in  this  country  was  first  discovered 
in  North  Carolina,  and  the  manufacture  of  iron  was  first 
undertaken  in  Virginia,  the  first  successful  iron  works  were 
established  in  the  province  of  Massachusetts  Bay.  In  1632 
mention  is  made  by  Morton  of  the  existence  of  "  iron  stone  " 
in  New  England,  and  in  November,  1637,  the  general  court 
of  Massachusetts  granted  to  Abraham  Shaw  one-half  of  the 
benefit  of  any  "  coles  or  yron  stone  wch  shal  be  found  in  any 
comon  ground  wch  is  in  the  country es  disposeing."  Iron  ore 
had  been  discovered  in  the  flat  meadows  on  the  upper  parts 
of  the  Saugus  river,  near  Lynn,  soon  after  its  settlement  in 
1629,  and  in  1642  specimens  were  taken  to  London  by  Rob- 
ert Bridges  in  the  'hope  that  a  company  might  be  formed  for 
the  manufacture  of  iron.  This  hope  was  soon  realized  in  the 
formation  of  "  The  Company  of  Undertakers  for  the  Iron 
Works,"  consisting  of  eleven  English  gentlemen,  who  advanc- 
ed £1,000  to  establish  the  works.  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  had 
previously  gone  to  England,  and  he  appears  to  have  assisted 
Mr.  Bridges  in  securing  the  organization  of  the  company,  be- 
coming a  member  of  the  company,  as  did  others  among  the 
colonists.  Mr.  Endicott,  of  Salem,  in  a  letter  to  Governor 
Winthrop,  dated  December  1,  1642,  says : . "  I  want  much  to 
hear  from  your  son's  iron  and  steel."  Thomas  Dexter  and 
Robert  Bridges,  both  of  Lynn,  were  among  the  original  pro- 
moters of  the  enterprise.  In  his  History  of  Lynn  (1844)  Alon- 
zo  Lewis  says  that  in  1643  "  Mr.  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  came 
from  England  with  workmen  and  stock  to  the  amount  of  one 
thousand  pounds  for  commencing  the  work.  A  foundry  was 
erected  on  the  western  bank  of  Saugus  river.  The  village  at 
the  foundry  was  called  Hammersmith  by  some  of  the  princi- 
pal workmen,  who  came  from  a  place  of  that  name  in  Eng- 
land." In  NewhalFs  revision  of  Lewis's  history,  published  in 
1865,  the  iron  works  are  said  to  have  been  located  near  the 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  109 

site  of  the  present  woolen  factories  in  Saugus  Centre,  not  far 
from  Lynn,  where  large  heaps  of  scoria  are  still  to  be  seen. 
"  This  iron  foundry  at  Lynn,"  says  Lewis,  "  was  the  first 
which  was  established  in  America."  Iron  is  not  now  man- 
ufactured at  or  near  Lynn,  except  in  its  secondary  forms. 
There  are  here  large  iron  foundries,  and  also  wire  works, 
nail  works,  and  various  other  iron  enterprises  of  a  reproduc- 
tive character. 

In  1644  and  subsequently,  as  stated  by  Lewis,  the  general 
court  granted  many  special  privileges  to  the  company.  On 
March  7,  1644,  it  was  granted  three  miles  square  of  land  at 
each  of  six  places  it  might  occupy  in  the  prosecution  of  its 
business.  On  November  13,  1644,  it  was  allowed  three  years 
"  for  ye  perfecting  of  their  worke  and  furnishing  of  ye  country 
with  all  sorts  of  barr  iron."  The  citizens  were  granted  liber- 
ty to  take  stock  in  the  enterprise  "  if  they  would  complete 
the  finery  and  forge,  as  well  as  the  furnace,  which  is  already 
set  up."  On  May  14,  1645,  the  general  court  passed  an  or- 
der declaring  that  "  ye  iron  worke  is  very  successful  (both  in 
ye  richness  of  ye  ore  and  ye  goodness  of  ye  iron),"  and  that 
between  £1,200  and  £1,500  had  already  been  disbursed,  "  with 
which  ye  furnace  is  built,  with  that  which  belongeth  to  it,  .  . 
and  some  tuns  of  sowe  iron  cast  in  readines  for  ye  forge.  .  . 
There  will  be  neede  of  some  £1,500  to  finish  ye  forge."  On 
October  14th  of  the  same  year  the  company  was  granted 
still  further  privileges  by  the  general  court,  on  the  condi- 
tion "that  the  inhabitants  of  this  jurisdiction  be  furnished 
with  barr  iron  of  all  sorts  for  their  use,  not  exceeding  twentye 
pounds  per  tunn,"  and  that  the  grants  of  land  already  made 
should  be  used  "  for  the  building  and  seting  up  of  six  for- 
ges, or  furnaces,  and  not  bloomaries  onely,"  The  grant  was 
confirmed  to  the  company  of  the  free  use  of  all  materials 
"for  making  or  moulding  any  manner  of  gunnes,  potts,  and 
all  other  cast-iron  ware."  On  May  6,  1646,  Richard  Leader, 
the  general  agent  of  the  company,  who  is  described  as  being 
a  man  of  superior  ability,  purchased  "  some  of  the  country's 
gunnes  to  melt  over  at  the  foundery."  On  August  4,  1648, 
Governor  Winthrop  wrote  from  Boston  to  his  son,  who  had 
removed  to  Pequod,  Connecticut,  that  "  the  iron  work  goeth 
on  with  more  hope.  It  yields  now  about  7  tons  per  week." 


HO  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

On  September  30th  he  writes  again :  "  The  furnace  runs  8 
tons  per  week,  and  their  bar  iron  is  as  good  as  Spanish." 

Newhall  quotes  from  a  Lynn  account  book  for  1651  the 
following  entry:  "James  Leonnarde,  15  days  worke  about 
fimierey  chimneye  and  other  worke  in  ye  forge,  1  :  13  :  0. 
To  ditto  Leonard  for  dressing  his  bellows  3  times,  1  :  10  :  0." 
Edward  Johnson,  of  Woburn,  in  describing  Lynn  in  1652, 
in  his  Wonder  Working  Providence,  printed  in  1654,  says  that 
"  there  is  also  an  iron  mill  in  constant  use ; "  and  Mr.  Lewis 
states  that,  prior  to  1671,  "  the  iron  works  for  several  years 
were  carried  on  with  vigor,  and  furnished  most  of  the  iron 
used  in  the  colony."  After  1671  they  were  fitfully  operated, 
and  about  1688  they  appear  to  have  been  finally  abandoned. 
Their  owners  were  harassed  after  1651  with  frequent  lawsuits, 
arising  from  the  overflow  of  the  water  in  the  dam.  The  fear 
that  the  works  would  create  a  scarcity  of  timber  also  appears 
to  have  added  to  their  unpopularity.  Rev.  William  Hubbard, 
in  his  Present  State  of  New  England,  printed  in  1677,  says  that 
"a  work  was  set  up  at  Lynn  upon  a  very  commodious  stream, 
which  was  very  much  promoted  and  strenuously  carried  on 
for  some  time,  but  at  length,  instead  of  drawing  out  bars  of 
iron  for  the  country's  use,  there  was  hammered  out  nothing 
but  contentions  and  lawsuits." 

From  the  foregoing  details  it  is  plainly  established  that 
the  enterprise  at  Lynn  embraced  a  blast  furnace,  or  "  found- 
ery,"  and  a  refinery  forge.  The  term  found ery  was  long  a 
synonym  for  furnace,  castings  being  made  directly  from  the 
furnace,  as  has  been  previously  stated.  This  usage  contin- 
ued in  this  country  down  to  about  the  middle  of  the  present 
century,  and  it  is  still  followed  in  some  European  countries. 
That  the  furnace  was  in  operation  in  May,  1645,  is  certain, 
and  that  the  forge  was  in  operation  in  September,  1648,  is 
equally  certain.  These  dates  may  be  accepted  as  definitely 
determining,  respectively,  the  first  successful  attempts  in 
this  country  to  make  "  sowe  iron"  and  other  castings  in  a 
blast  furnace  and  to  make  "  barr  iron  "  in  a  refinery  forge 
from  "  sowe  iron." 

Mr.  Nathan  M.  Hawkes,  of  Lynn,  furnished  to  the  Maga- 
zine of  American  History  for  November,  1889,  the  following 
description  of  the  exact  site  of  the  Lvnn  iron  works. 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  Ill 

Midway  between  Salem  and  Boston,  the  first  and  second  capitals  of 
Massachusetts,  there  flows  a  serpentine  little  stream  called  the  Saugus  by 
the  Indians  and  their  English  successors.  Tide-water  meets  the  down-flow- 
ing fresh  water  two  miles  from  the  bay  between  Round  Hill  on  the  west 
and  the  dark  forest  on  the  east.  Just  where  the  currents  lap  each  other  on 
the  bank  of  the  stream  is  a  long  sloping  mound  like  a  sea-serpent's  back, 
which  to  the  passer-by  seems  but  a  freak  of  nature.  The  hand  of  man, 
however,  wrought  that  earth-work.  At  this  point  wras  the  upper  ferry  cross- 
ed in  the  early  days  by  Endicott  and  Winthrop  and  all  the  Puritan  wor- 
thies in  the  infancy  of  Xew  England.  The  mound  which  lies  at  this  point 
upon  the  river-bank,  and  is  known  to  the  natives  as  "  the  cinder  banks,"  is 
the  heaped-up  scoria — the  refuse,  the  remainder,  the  sweepings  of  an  iron 
foundry  which  was  in  full  blast  before  the  red  man  had  cast  his  last  linger- 
ing look  upon  his  beloved  river  and  upon  the  blue  waters  of  the  Atlantic 
beyond.  The  fleecy  snows  have  mantled  it,  the  sun  has  scorched  it  for  two 
centuries,  and  only  an  occasional  curious  observer  has  disturbed  its  scanty 
covering  of  vegetation  for  some  relic  of  the  first  manufacturing  industry  of 
the  continent. 

The  bog  ore  was  largely  taken  from  the  meadows  of  the  farms  of  Mr. 
Adam  Hawkes,  two  miles  north  of  the  works.  Mr.  Hawkes  furnished  the 
ore,  and  he  was  also  the  persistent  plaintiff  in  many  suits  against  the  com- 
pany for  flowing  his  lands.  It  is  an  interesting  fact  that,  while  the  Puritans 
abandoned  all  the  mother  country  restrictions  concerning  the  conveyance  of 
land,  these  fields  that  became  the  property  of  Adam  Hawkes,  and  the  site 
where  he  built  his  first  house,  about  1630,  have  never  been  alienated  from 
his  family,  but  are  still  occupied  by  his  lineal  descendants  and  are  yet  in  the 
same  name.  This  tenacity  of  holding  is  an  English  trait,  but  it  is  rare  even 
in  New  England  to  witness  a  land  tenure  so  long  unbroken. 

Joseph  Jenks  was  a  machinist  at  the  Lynn  works  who 
had  come  frorii  Hammersmith  in  England  and  was  a  man  of 
much  skill  and  inventive  genius.  He  prepared  the  moulds 
for  the  first  castings  that  were  made  at  Lynn^  "A  small  iron 
pot,  capable  of  containing  about  one  quart,"  was  the  first  ar- 
ticle cast  at  the  furnace.  In  1844  it  was  in  the  possession  of 
Mr.  Lewis's  mother,  who  was  a  lineal  descendant  of  Thomas 
Hudson,  the  first  owner  of  the  lands  on  Saugus  river  on  which 
the  iron  works  were  built,  and  who  obtained  possession  of  the 
pot  immediately  after  it  was  cast,  "  which  he  preserved  as  a 
curiosity."  "It  has  been  handed  down  in  the  family  ever 
since,"  wrote  Mr.  Lewis  in  1844.  Mr.  C.  M.  Tracy,  of  Lynn, 
writes  us  in  1890  that  by  some  carelessness  years  ago  one  leg 
of  the  pot  was  broken  off,  when  a  leaden  one  was  made  and 
clumsily  substituted,  but  the  remainder  of  the  pot  "  is  per- 
fect to-day."  "  It  is  of  the  old  dinner-pot  pattern,"  adds  Mr. 
Tracy,  "  and,  although  holding  only  about  a  quart,  is  heavy 


112  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

enough  to  make  three  in  the  hands  of  a  modem  founder." 
This  first  iron  utensil  cast  in  this  country  is  now  in  the  pos- 
session of  two  sons  of  Alonzo  Lewis,  residing  at  Etna  Place, 
Lynn.  Their  names  are  Llewellyn  and  Arthur  Lewis. 

Joseph  Jenks,  who  became  the  founder  of  a  noted  New 
England  family,  purchased  from  Richard  Leader  on  Janu- 
ary 20,  1647,  the  privilege  of  building  a  forge  at  the  Lynn 
iron  works  for  the  manufacture  of  scythes  and  other  edge 
tools.  This  enterprise  was  successful.  In  1652  he  made  at 
these  iron  works,  for  the  mint  wrhich  was  that  year  estab- 
lished at  Boston,  the  dies  for  the  first  silver  pieces  coined  in 
New  England.  On  one  side  of  these  coins  was  the  impression 
of  a  pine  tree;  hence  the  name  by  which  they  have  since 
been  known,  "pine-tree  shillings."  In  1654  he  made  for  the 
city  of  Boston  the  first  fire  engine  made  in  America.  In  1655 
the  general  court  granted  him  a  patent  for  an  improved 
scythe.  His  name  is  also  associated  with  other  inventions. 
He  died  in  1683.  Mr.  Hawkes  says  of  the  scythe  which  he 
invented  :  "  This  improvement  consisted  in  lengthening  the 
blade,  making  it  thinner,  and  welding  a  square  bar  on  the 
back  to  strengthen  it,  as  in  the  scythe  of  to-day.  Before  this 
the  old  English  blade  was  short  and  thick  like  a  bush  scythe. 
This  invention  lightened  the  labor  and  cheered  the  hearts  of 
merry  mowers  till  the  mowing  machine  of  our  day  supersed- 
ed the  old  emblem  of  the  husbandman." 

Henry  and  James  Leonard  were  also  skilled  workmen  at 
Lynn.  They  an,d  their  descendants  were  afterwards  identified 
with  many  colonial  iron  enterprises.  The  family  name  is  the 
most  noted  in  the  annals  of  the  New  England  iron  industry. 
Rev.  Dr.  Fobes,  in  referring  to  the  Leonard  family  in  his  To- 
pographical Description  of  Raynliam,  ivith  its  History,  written  in 
1793,  says  that  "  the  circumstance  of  a  family  attachment  to 
the  iron  manufacture  is  so  well  known  as  to  render  it  a  com- 
mon observation  in  this  part  of  the  country,  '  Where  you  can 
find  iron  works  there  you  will  find  a  Leonard.'"  Henry  and 
James  Leonard  are  said  to  have  learned  their  trade  at  Pon- 
typool,  in  Monmouthshire.  They  were  forgemen. 

The  second  iron  enterprise  that  was  undertaken  in  New 
England  embraced  a  furnace  and  forge  at  Braintree,  in  Nor- 
folk county,  about  ten  miles  south  of  Boston.  The  works  at 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  113 

Lynn  and  Braintree  belonged  to  the  same  company.  Bishop 
says  that  on  the  19th  of  .November,  1643,  a  grant  of  3,000 
acres  of  the  common  land  at  Braintree  was  made  to  Mr.  Wiii- 
throp  and  his  partners,  the  Lynn  company,  "  for  the  encour- 
agement of  an  iron  work  to  be  set  up  about  Monotcot  river." 
The  true  spelling  of  the  name  of  this  river  is  Monontocot. 
But  this  grant,  according  to  Lewis,  was  not  surveyed  until 
January  11,  1648.  On  the  29th  of  September,  1645,  as  stated 
by  Lewis,  the  first  purchase  of  land,  consisting  of  twenty  acres 
"for  a  forge  at  Braintree,"  was  made  from  George  Ruggles  by 
Richard  Leader,  who  was  the  general  agent  for  the  company 
of  undertakers.  The  furnace  was  probably  built  in  1646. 
Robert  Child,  writing  from  Boston  on  the  15th  of  March, 
1647,  to  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  "  at  Pequot  river,"  says  of  the 
Lynn  and  Braintree  enterprises  :  "  We  have  cast  this  winter 
some  tuns  of  pots,  likewise  mortars,  stoves,  skillets.  Our  pot- 
ter is  moulding  more  at  Brayntree  as  yet,  which  place  after 
another  blowing  we  shall  quit,  not  finding  mine  there."  We 
find,  however,  that  iron  ore  was  mined  at  Braintree  in  the 
early  part  of  1652,  and  that  on  the  28th  of  September  of  that 
year  it  was  proposed  at  London  on  behalf  of  the  undertakers 
to  employ  William  Osborne  at  "  Brantry  furnas  &  fordges." 
Operations  at  the  works  were  suspended  in  1653,  owing  to  the 
scarcity  of  ore.  Henry  Leonard  is  said  to  have  superintend- 
ed the  erection  of  the  Braintree  works,  although  James  Leon- 
ard was  certainly  connected  with  them,  residing  at  Braintree 
in  1653,  when  he  removed  to  Taunton.  John  Gilford  was 
the  manager  of  the  Braintree  works,  according  to  Newhall. 
In  1651  he  succeeded  Richard  Leader  as  the  agent  for  the 
works  at  Lynn.  John  Adams  and  his  son,  John  Quincy 
Adams,  were  both  natives  of  Braintree. 

The  next  iron  enterprise  in  New  England  was  located  in 
the  town,  or  township,  of  Taunton,  (now  Raynham,)  in  Bristol 
county,  two  miles  from  the  city  of  Taunton.  This  enterprise 
was  undertaken  in  1652  by  a  company  composed  of  citizens 
of  Taunton,  who  employed  Henry  and  James  Leonard  and 
Ralph  Russell  as  practical  ironworkers.  At  a  town  meeting 
at  Taunton,  held  October  21, 1652,  "  it  was  agreed  and  grant- 
ed by  the  town  to  the  said  Henry  Leonard  and  James  Leon- 
ard, his  brother,  and  Ralph  Russell  free  consent  to  come 


114  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

hither  and  join  with  certain  of  our  inhabitants  to  set  up  a 
bloomery  work  on  the  Two-mile  river."  The  works  thus 
projected  were  put  in  operation  in  1656.  These  works,  which 
must  be  called  the  Taunton  forge,  are  referred  to  by  Lewis 
as  "Leonards'  celebrated  iron  works."  But  the  Leonards  con- 
tributed nothing  towTard  their  erection  except  their  skill  as 
ironworkers,  James  Leonard  owning  but  half  a  share  in  the 
stock  of  the  company  and  his  brother  not  being  a  stockholder 
at  all.  George  Hall  was  the  first  clerk  and  manager,  which 
position  he  held  almost  continuously  until  his  death  in  1669. 
His  successors  were  John  Hall  and  others  until  1683,  when 
Captain  Thomas  Leonard  became  the  manager,  and  so  con- 
tinued until  his  death  in  1713.  The  forge  long  continued  in 
a  prosperous  condition.  Bar  iron  was  made  directly  from 
the  ore.  As  Henry  Leonard  was  again  at  Lynn  in  1655,  and 
as  James  Leonard  does  not  appear  to  have  been  there  after 
1652,  it  is  certain  that  the  latter  and  his  sons  and  descend- 
ants were  the  only  Leonards  who  became  completely  iden- 
tified with  the  active  operations  of  the  Taunton  forge.  The 
Leonards  long  continued  their  connection  with  the  Taunton 
works  as  master  workmen.  Ralph  Russell  did  not  remain 
at  Taunton,  and  is  said  to  have  established  a  forge  at  Rus- 
sell's Mills,  "which  place  received  its  name  from  him." 

There  seems  to  have  existed  a  strong  bond  of  friendship 
between  James  Leonard  and  King  Philip,  the  sachem  of  the 
Wampanoags.  Elisha  Clarke  Leonard,  in  an  address  in  1886 
before  the  Old  Colony  Historical  Society,  at  Taunton,  fully 
proves  that  in  1665  Philip  gave  to  James  Leonard  the 
deed  for  a  neck  of  land  embracing  about  150  acres,  "lying 
by  Mr.  Brinton's  land  at  Matapoyset,  being  bounded  on  each 
side  by  a  brook,"  it  being  the  intention  of  Mr.  Leonard  to 
"  set  up  a  mill  or  iron  work  if  occasion  were."  But  the  deed 
was  not  confirmed  by  the  colonial  authorities,  and  Mr.  Leon- 
ard was  deprived  of  the  Indian's  gift. 

In  an  address  read  before  the  Old  Colony  Historical  So- 
ciety, at  Taunton,  in  July,  1884,  Captain  J.  W.  D.  Hall  said 
that  the  hammers  "and  other  heavy  iron  machinery  for  the 
Taunton  "  bloomerie "  came  from  abroad ;  also  that,  on  the 
division  of  Taunton  in  1731,  the  iron  works  were  included  in 
'the  new  town  of  Raynham.  He  also  said  that  "the  works 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  115 

made  from  20  to  30  tons  annually,  which  brought  from  £400 
to  £675,  averaging  about  $100  a  ton  of  our  currency.  About 
a  year  ago  the  old  buildings  were  demolished,  and  the  privi- 
lege, dam,  and  foundation  walls  alone  remain  of  the  ancient 
Taunton  iron  works  of  224  years — the  oldest  successful  iron 
manufactory  in  New  England." 

The  Taunton  forge,  says  Fobes  in  1793,  was  situated  on 
"  the  great  road,  and,  having  been  repaired  from  generation 
to  generation,  it  is  to  this  day  still  in  employ."  In  William 
Read  Deane's  Genealogical  Record  of  the  Leonard  Family,  pub- 
lished in  1851,  it  is  stated  that  "  the  old  forge,  though  it  has 
been  several  times  remodeled,  has  been  in  constant  use  for 
nearly  two  hundred  years, 'and  is  now  in  the  full  tide  of  suc- 
cessful operation.  It  is  owned  by  Theodore  Dean,  Esq.,  who 
is  descended  from  the  Leonards."  The  forge  was  at  that  time 
employed  in  the  manufacture  of  anchors.  In  1865  it  was 
still  so  employed,  with  four  forge  fires,  two  hammers,  and  two 
water-wheels,  but  about  that  time  it  ceased  to  be  active  and 
has  since  been  abandoned  and  dismantled. 

In  1657  the  general  court  of  Massachusetts,  owing  to  the 
failure  of  the  undertakers  at  Lynn  and  Braintree  to  furnish 
the  colony  with  a  constant  supply  of  iron,  "  whereby  unsuf- 
ferable  damage  may  accrew,"  granted  to  the  inhabitants  of 
Concord  and  Lancaster,  and  such  as  they  should  associate 
with  them,  "  liberty  to  erect  one  or  more  iron  workes  within 
the  limitts  of  theire  oune  toune  bounds,  or  in  any  common 
place  neere  thereunto."  That  this  grant  resulted  in  the  es- 
tablishment of  iron  works  at  Concord  appears  probable  from 
the  grant  by  the  court  in  1660,  to  "  ye  company  in  partner- 
ship in  the  iron  worke  at  Concord,"  of  "  free  liberty  to  digg 
mine  without  molestation  in  any  lands  now  in  the  court's 
possession." 

About  1668  Henry  Leonard  went  to  Rowley  village,  25 
miles  northeast  of  Lynn,  as  stated  by  Newhall,  "  and  there 
established  iron  works."  Lewis  says  that  in  1674  Henry 
Leonard's  sons,  Nathaniel,  Samuel,  and  Thomas,  contracted  to 
carry  on  these  works  for  the  owners,  whose  names  are  given 
by  Bishop  as  "John  Ruck  and  others  of  Salem."  The  works 
did  not  prove  to  be  profitable.  After  establishing  the  Rowley 
works  Henry  Leonard  went  to  New  Jersey,  "  and  there  again 


116  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

engaged  in  the  iron  manufacture."  At  some  time  previous  to 
his  removal  to  New  Jersey  he  appears  to  have  been  connected 
with  the  establishment  of  iron  works  at  Canton,  about  four- 
teen miles  south  of  Boston. 

Other  iron  enterprises  in  Massachusetts  speedily  followed 
those  that  have  been  mentioned.  In  1677  one  of  these  works, 
the  name  of  which  has  not  come  down  to  us,  was .  destroyed 
by  the  Indians.  About  the  same  year  iron  was  made  at  Tops- 
field,  near  Ipswich,  and  in  1680  its  manufacture  was  com- 
menced at  Boxford.  Hubbard,  writing  about  1677,  says  that 
at  that  time  there  were  in  the  colonies  "  many  convenient 
places,  where  very  good  iron,  not  much  inferior  to  that  of 
Bilbao,  may  be  produced,  as  at  this  day  is  seen  in  a  village 
near  Topsfield,  seven  or  eight  miles  wrest  from  Ipswich."  Mr. 
Tracy,  however,  informs  us  that  there  is  a  tradition  that  the 
Topsfield  works  were  never  very  productive. 

From  the  address  of  Captain  Hall  we  glean  the  following 
additional  information  concerning  early  Taunton  iron  works. 

Whittington  iron  works,  on  Mill  river,  were  built  by  James 
Leonard,  senior,  "forgeman,"  in  1670.  These  works  embraced 
a"bloomerie  with  one  hearth."  Mr.  Leonard's  three  sons, 
Joseph,  Benjamin,  and  Uriah,  having  served  in  the  Taunton 
iron  works  at  the  "  refining  and  bloomerie"  trade,  worked  the 
forge.  They  also  had  a  grist  mill  at  the  same  place.  Cap- 
tain Hall  says  that  "  this  was  the  location  of  James  Leonard's 
iron  works."  James  Leonard  died  in  1691.  The  Whittington 
bloomary  was  continued  by  his  sons  and  by  their  succes- 
sors for  more  than  a  hundred  years.  During  the  first  fifty 
years  it  was  supplied  with  bog  ore  mined  in  the  vicinity  of 
"  Scadding's  moire"  and  pond,  and  "along  up  Mill  river  to 
Winneconnet  pond." 

In  the  years  1696  and  1697  the  Chartley  iron  works  were 
built  on  Stony  brook,  within  the  limits  of  Taunton  North 
Purchase.  "  The  iron  work  and  tools  required  were  made  at 
the  Taunton  iron  works."  These  works  were  built  by  Thom- 
as and  James  Leonard,  and  embraced  only  a  bloomary  for  the 
manufacture  of  bar  iron.  They  went  into  operation  in  1698. 
In  1713  George  Leonard  became  the  sole  owner  of  these 
works  and  greatly  enlarged  them.  The  above  enterprise  was 
the  origin  of  the  noted  Leonard  iron  works  of  Norton,  and 


IRON   IN    ALL   AGES.  117 

one  of  the  chief  causes  of  the  organization  and  incorpora- 
tion of  that  town  in  1711.  Native  bog  ore  was  always  used. 

A  small  forge,  or  "  bloomerie,"  to  use  bog  ore,  was  built 
about  1695  "  at  Taunton  line,  on  Three-mile  river,  near  the 
present  site  of  North  Dighton  furnace,"  by  Richard  Stephens, 
"in  connection  with  his  son  and  others."  In  1739  these  works 
were  enlarged.  They  appear  to  have  been  kept  in  operation 
until  near  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

"  The  first  hollow- ware  manufactory "  in  the  Old  Colony 
of  New  Plymouth  was  King's  furnace,  built  on  Littleworth 
brook,  in  the  eastern  part  of  Taunton,  in  1724  and  1725,  by 
a  stock  company  of  which  John  King  was  the  principal  mem- 
ber ;  hence  the  name,  King's  furnace.  In  1725  the  casting  of 
hollow-ware  was  commenced,  from  the  size  of  a  pint  kettle  to 
a  ten-pail  cauldron.  The  ore  first  used  was  bog  ore  found  in 
the  neighborhood.  This  furnace  was  a  successful  enterprise. 
It  was  rebuilt  in  1816,  when  it  "  employed  about  30  moulders 
and  men,  doing  a  large  business."  Its  wares  were  even  trans- 
ported to  New  York  "  by  sloops  at  Weir  village,  which  on 
their  return  brought  pig  iron  and  ore  from  New  Jersey." 
The  furnace  was  in  operation  for  several  years  after  1839. 

The  Hopewell  iron  works,  embracing  a  bloomary  only, 
were  built  on  Mill  river,  in  Taunton,  in  1739  and  1740,  by 
Captain  Zephaniah  Leonard,  to  make  bar  iron  from  bog  ore. 
The  bloomary  was  succeeded  by  a  rolling  and  slitting  mill, 
erected  by  John  Adam  in  1776  and  1777.  In  1782  the  prop- 
erty passed  into  the  hands  of  Samuel  Leonard  and  others,  of 
Taunton.  Captain  Hall  says  that  "Russia  and  Swede  iron, 
imported  in  bars,  were  rolled  and  converted  into  rods  for  the 
best  of  hammered  nails,  furnishing  partial  employment  for 
many  farmer  nailers  within  an  area  of  a  dozen  miles.  Fi- 
nally, the  business  proving  unprofitable,  the  works  were  aban- 
doned." We  pass  over  other  early  Taunton  iron  works. 

For  a  hundred  years  after  its  settlement  in  1620  Massa- 
chusetts was  the  chief  seat  of  the  iron  manufacture  on  this 
continent.  Most  of  its  iron  enterprises  during  this  hundred 
years  were  ore  bloomaries,  but  there  were  blast  furnaces  also, 
although  the  latter  as  a  rule  produced  only  hollow-ware  and 
other  castings  and  not  pig  iron.  During  the  period  men- 
tioned the  iron  industry  of  Massachusetts  was  confined  to 


118  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

the  eastern  counties  of  the  colony,  where  bog  and  pond  ores 
formed  the  only  kinds  of  ore  that  were  obtainable.  Char- 
coal was  the  only  fuel  used,  and  water-power  was  the  only 
power  employed. 

The  English  settlement  at  New  Haven  closely  followed 
Massachusetts  in  the  manufacture  of  iron.  John  Winthrop, 
Jr.,  who  removed  from  Lynn  to  Pequod,  (New  London,)  Con- 
necticut, in  1645,  had  obtained  from  the  general  court  in  the 
preceding  year  permission  to .  set  up  an  iron  work,  and  in 
1651  he  obtained  a  grant  of  certain  privileges  to  enable  him 
to  "  adventure  "  in  the  manufacture  of  iron ;  but  he  does  not 
seem  to  have  embarked  in  the  iron  business  until  some  time 
subsequently.  On"  May  30,  1655,  as  we  learn  from  Bishop, 
it  was  ordered  by  the  assembly  of  New  Haven  "  that  if  an 
iron  worke  goe  on  within  any  part  of  this  jurisdiction  the 
persons  and  estates  constantly  and  onely  imployed  in  that 
worke  shall  be  free  from  paying  rates."  In  1658  Captain 
Thomas  Clarke,  in  company  with  John  Winthrop  and  oth- 
ers, put  in  operation  an  "  iron  worke  "  at  New  Haven,  and  in 
1669  he  seems  to  have  been  still  engaged  in  the  same  enter- 
prise, for  in  that  year  the  general  court  of  Connecticut  con- 
tinued the  exemption  already  noted  for  another  seven  years, 
"for  encouragement  of  the  said  worke  in  supplying  the 
country  with  good  iron  and  well  wrought  according  to  art." 
This  enterprise  embraced  a  blast  furnace  and  a  refinery  forge. 
On  the  22d  of  June,  1663,  John  Davenporte  wrote  from  New 
Haven  to  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  as  follows :  "  The  freshest 
newes  here,  &  that  which  is  e  re  vestra,  is  that  they  have  bene 
blowing  at  the  iron  worke,  and  have  runne,  from  the  last  6th 
day  to  this  2d  day,  5  sowes  of  iron,  which  are  commended  for 
very  good;  &  this  night  it's  thought  they  will  run  another, 
&  begin  to-morrow  to  make  pots.  The  worke  is  hopeful,  but 
the  workemen  are  thought  to  be  very  chargeable  and  fro- 
ward."  This  frowardness  was  due  apparently  to  the  influ- 
ence of  an  old  enemy  of  iron  works  and  ironworkers,  John 
Barleycorn.  Bishop  records  "  a  proposition  made  in  May, 
1662,  'in  ye  behalf  e  of  Capt.  Clarke,  that  wine  and  liquors 
drawn  at  the  iron  workes  might  be  custome  free4,'  which  was 
allowed  to  the  extent  of  one  butt  of  wine  and  one  barrell  of 
liquors,  and  no  more." 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  119 

Rhode  Island  made  iron  soon  after  its  settlement  in  1636, 
certainly  at  Pawtucket  and  elsewhere  as  early  as  1675,  when 
a  forge  at  Pawtucket,  erected  by  Joseph  Jenks,  Jr.,  son  of 
Joseph  Jenks,  the  machinist  at  Lynn,  was  destroyed  by  the 
Indians  in  the  Wampanoag  war,  as  well  as  other  iron  works 
and  infant  enterprises.  A  third  Joseph  Jenks  was  Gover- 
nor of  Rhode  Island  from  1727  to  1732.  The  few  iron  enter- 
prises that  were  established  in  this  colony  in  the  seventeenth 
century  used  bog  or  pond  ore,  but  in  the  succeeding  century 
rock  ore  was  also  used.  There  is  a  deposit  of  magnetic  iron 
ore  in  Cumberland  township,  known  as  Cumberland  hill. 
This  hill,  or  mountain,  is  described  as  forming  "  a  homo- 
geneous mass  of  iron  ore,  about  500  feet  long  by  150  feet 
wide  and  104  feet  high,  or,  in  bulk,  equal  to  about  1,000,000 
tons  above  water  level,  while,  as  the  deposit  shows  an  indefi- 
nite extension  in  depth,  the  quantity  of  this  ore  may  be  said 
to  be  practically  inexhaustible."  Hematite  ore  was  found  at 
Cranston. 

Iron  does  not  appear  to  have  been  made  within  the  limits 
of  Maine,  New  Hampshire,  or  Vermont  until  the  eighteenth 
century. 

We  now  give  an  engraving  of  the  Lynn  pqt,  the  first 
iron  article  made  from  native  ore  in  America,  cast  at  Lynn, 
Massachusetts,  in  1645,  and  still  preserved.  This  engraving 
is  from  a«  photograph  obtained  in  1890  for  this  work  by  Mr. 
C.  M.  Tracy,  of  Lynn.  The  pot  weighs  2  pounde,  13  ounces ; 
its  capacity  is  1  quart  less  1  gill ;  its  inside  measurement  is 
4.5  inches  wide  by  4.5  inches  deep. 


120  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER   XL 

EXTENSION  OF  THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN 
NEW  ENGLAND. 

IN  his  valuable  essay  on  the  iron  ores  and  iron  enter- 
prises of  Plymouth  county,  Massachusetts,  printed  in  1804, 
Dr.  James  Thacher  says  :  "  The  first  furnace  for  smelting 
iron  ore  known  in  the  county  of  Plymouth  was  erected  in  the 
year  1702  by  Lambert  Despard  (a  founder)  and  the  family  of 
Barkers,  his  associates,  at  the  mouth  of  Mattakeeset  pond  in 
the  town  of  Pembroke,  but  the  wood  in  the  vicinity  being 
exhausted  the  works  were  long  since  abandoned."  In  James 
Torrey's  History  of  Scituate,  in  Plymouth  county,  wrritten  in 
1815,  mention  is  made  of  an  iron  enterprise  in  the  township 
of  Scituate,  as  follows  :  "  In  1648  Mr.  Timothy  Hatherly,  the 
principal  founder  and  father  of  the  town  of  Scituate,  request- 
ed liberty  of  the  colony  to  erect  an  iron  mill.  It  was  granted 
in  1650,  conditional  to  be  erected  within  three  years,  or  the 
privilege,  certain  woodlands  about  Mattakeeset  pond,  (now 
Pembroke,)  to  revert  to  the  colony.  It  did  not,  however,  take 
place  at  that  period,  but  l  a  smelting  furnace  was  erected  on 
the  precise  grant  by  Mark  Despard  and  the  family  of  Barker 
about  1702.i"  The  enterprise  of  Despard  and  the  Barkers 
was  speedily  followed  by  the  erection  of  a  bloomary  forge 
on  Bound  brook,  near  Hingham,  in  1703,  by  a  company  in 
which  two  brothers,  Daniel  and  Mordecai  Lincoln,  were  part- 
ners. In  Torrey's  History  of  Sdtuate  mention  is  made  of  the 
erection  of  the  Drinkwater  iron  works,  near  Abington,  about 
1710,  by  a  person  named  Mighill,  probably  Rev.  Thomas  Mig- 
hill.  Hingham  and  Abington  are  both  in  Plymouth  county. 

About  1722  a  bloomary  forge  was  built  at  Bridgewater, 
which  was  active  in  1750.  In  1738  Hugh  Orr,  a  Scotchman, 
established  at  this  place  a  gun  factory,  and  about  1748  he 
made  five  hundred  muskets  for  the  province  of  Massachu- 
setts Bay,  which  are  claimed  to  have  been  the  first  muskets 
manufactured  in  this  country.  Subsequently  he  established 
a  cast-iron  cannon  foundry  at  Bridgewater,  and  was  instru- 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  121 

mental  in  promoting  various  other  manufacturing  enterprises. 
In  1730  iron  works  were  erected  at  Plympton,  now  Carver, 
which  appear  to  have  embraced  a  blast  furnace,  as  mention 
is  made  of  "  the  first  cast-iron  tea-kettle  "  having  been  cast  at 
Plympton  between  1760  and  1765.  Bishop  says  :  "  That  im- 
portant utensil  had  been  previously  made  of  wrought  iron, 
and  was  imported  from  England.  A  copper  tea-kettle  was  first 
used  at  Ply  mouth,  whence  Carver  was  chiefly  settled,  in  1702." 

The  first  slitting  mill  in  the  colonies  for  slitting  nail  rods 
is  said  by  tradition  to  have  been  erected  at  Milton,  in  Nor- 
folk county,  as  early  as  1710.  Bishop  accords  this  honor  to 
Middleborough,  in  Plymouth  county,  at  a  later  day,  but  he 
does  not  give  the  date  of  its  erection,  except  to  indicate  by 
the  context  that  it  was  built  before  1750.  We  have  in  our 
possession  a  very  excellent  draft  of  a  slitting  mill  at  Middle- 
borough  which  is  said  to  have  been  built  by  Judge  Peter 
Oliver  in  1751  and  which  was  abandoned  in  1830.  This  draft 
is  by  William  H.  Harrison,  of  Braintree,  Massachusetts.  It 
may  be  found  reproduced  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Ameri- 
can Society  of  Mechanical  Engineers  for  1881. 

Mr.  Tracy  writes  to  us  that  in  the  old  records  of  Essex 
county,  Massachusetts,  is  this  surprising  undated  entry,  insert- 
ed between  two  other  entries  dated  May  20th  and  June  17th, 
1650 :  "A  caveat  is  recorded  of  ye  sale  of  ye  slitting  mill  in  Lyn 
by  Richd  Ledder  for  tenn  powndes  to  Capt:Willm  Hathorne." 

In  1731  there  were  officially  reported  to  be  in  Massachu- 
setts "  several  forges  for  making  bar  iron,  and  some  furnaces 
for  cast  iron  or  hollow-ware,  and  one  slitting  mill,  and  a  man- 
ufacture for  nails."  The  slitting  mill  referred  to  was  located 
at  either  Milton  or  Middleborough.  At  the  same  time  there 
were  in  all  New  England  "  six  furnaces,  meaning  hollow-ware 
furnaces,  and  nineteen  forges,  meaning  bloomaries,  not  re- 
fineries." "At  that  time,"  says  Douglass,  in  his  British  Settle- 
ments, "we  had  no  pig  furnaces  nor  refineries  of  pigs"  in  New 
England.  Refineries  were  in  use  about  twenty  years  later. 

There  were  officially  reported  to  be  four  slitting  mills  in 
Massachusetts  in  1750 — two  at  Middleborough,  one  at  Hano- 
ver, and  one  at  Milton.;  also  a  plating-forge  with  a  tilt-ham- 
mer, and  one  steel  furnace.  In  1750  Douglass  thus  described 
the  iron  industry  of  New  England  : 


122  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Iron  is  a  considerable  article  in  our  manufacture ;  it  consists  of  these 
general  branches  :  (1)  Smelting  furnaces  reducing  the  ore  into  pigs  ;  having 
coal  enough  and  appearances  of  rock  ore.  In  Attleborough  were  erected  at 
a  great  charge  three  furnaces,  fcut  the  ore  proving  bad  and  scarce  this  pro- 
jection miscarried  as  to  pigs.  They  were  of  use  in  casting  of  small  cannon 
for  ships  of  letters  of  marque,  and  in  casting  cannon-balls  and  bombs  toward 
the  reduction  of  Louisbourg.  (2)  Kefmeries  which  manufacture  pigs,  im- 
ported from  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  and  Maryland  furnaces,  into  bar  iron. 
(3)  Bloomaries,  'which,  from  bog  or  swamp  ore,  without  any  furnace,  only  by 
a  forge  hearth,  reduce  it  into  a  bloom  or  semi-liquidated  lump  to  be  beat 
into  bars,  but  much  inferior  to  those  from  the  pigs  or  refineries.  (4)  Swamp 
ore  furnaces ;  from  that  ore  smelted  they  cast  hollow- ware  which  we  can 
afford  cheaper  than  from  England  or  Holland. 

Bog  or  swamp  ore  lies  from  half  a  foot  to  two  feet  deep.  In  about  20 
years  from  digging  it  grows  or  gathers  fit  for  another  digging ;  if  it  lies 
longer  it  turns  rusty  and  does  not  yield  well.  Three  tons  of  swamp  ore 
yield  about  one  ton  of  hollow-ware.  One  hundred  and  twenty  bushels  of 
charcoal  are  sufficient  to  smelt  rock  ore  into  one  ton  of  pigs.  The  com- 
plement of  men  for  a  furnace  is  eight  or  nine,  besides  cutters  of  wood, 
coalers,  carters,  and  other  common  laborers. 

In  New  England  we  have  two  slitting  mills  for  nail  rods :  one  in  Mil- 
ton, eight  miles  from  Boston,  and  another  in  Middleborough,  about  thirty 
miles  from  Boston,  wiiich  are  more  than  we  have  occasion  for.  Our  nailors 
can  afford  spikes  and  large  nails  cheaper  than  from  England,  but  small 
nails  not  so  cheap. 

In  New  England  they  do  not  forge  bar  iron  sufficient  for  their  home 
consumption  by  bloom  aries  and  refineries  ;  they  import  from  England,  New- 
York,  Jersies,  Pennsylvania,  and  Maryland. 

The  development  of  the  rich  brown  hematite  iron  ores 
of  Western  Massachusetts  commenced  about  1750.  It  is  said, 
however,  that  as  early  as  1731  iron  ore  was  taken  on  horse- 
back in  leather  bags  to  Ousatonic,  now  Great  Barrington,  in 
Berkshire  county,  from  Old  Hill  mine,  in  Litchfield  county, 
Connecticut,  a  distance  of  sixteen  miles,  and  worked  in  bloom- 
ary  forges.  A  furnace  was  built  at  Lenox,  in  Berkshire  coun- 
ty, in  1765,  and  it  made  pig  iron  in  the  following  year.  It 
had  an  exceptionally  high  stack  for  that  day — 28  feet  high, 
and  was  blown  with  one  tuyere.  This  furnace  was  torn  down 
in  1881.  Previous  to  1773  a  furnace  was  built  at  Furnace 
village,  in  Worcester  county,  and  a  few  years  after  that  date 
there  were  several  bloomaries  and  one  refinery  forge  in  the 
same  county.  In  1793  the  county  contained  several  manu- 
factories of  edge  tools,  hardware,  machinery,  etc.  In  the 
township  of  Sutton  there  were  at  this  time  one  axe,  one  hoe, 
and  five  scythe  manufactories,  and  several  naileries.  In  the 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  123 

whole  county  there  were  seventeen  trip-hammers.  At  Spring- 
field, in  Hampden  county,  as  stated  by  Bishop,  some  cannon 
were  cast  and  some  forging  was  done  during  the  Revolution, 
but  small  arms  were  not  made  here  until  after  the  peace.  The 
Government  armory  at  Springfield  was  established  in  1794. 

While  the  iron  industry  of  Massachusetts  was  being  ex- 
tended westward  it  made  rapid  progress  in  the  eastern  coun- 
ties. Charlotte  furnace  at  Middleborough  was  built  in  1758, 
and  was  in  operation  for  many  years.  During  our  two  wars 
with  the  mother  country  it  was  employed  in  casting  shot  and 
shells.  The  shot  which  the  Constitution  carried  in  her  conflict 
with  the  Guerriere  were  cast  at  this  furnace.  In  1784  there 
were  seventy-six  iron  works  in  Massachusetts,  "  many  of  them 
small."  At  Amesbury,  in  Essex  county,  a  furnace  was  erect- 
ed about  1790,  and  at  Boxborough,  in  Middlesex  county,  a 
bloomary  forge  was  built  about  the  same  time.  In  1795  Dr. 
Morse  reported  eleven  slitting  mills  in  Bristol,  Norfolk,  and 
Plymouth  counties,  which  rolled  and  cut  in  that  year  1,732 
tons  of  iron  into  hoops  and  nail  rods.  Bishop  says  that  "  the 
two  counties  of  Plymouth  and  Bristol  had  in  operation  in 
1798  fourteen  blast  and  six  air  furnaces,  twenty  forges,  and 
seven  rolling  and  slitting  mills,  in  addition  to  a  number  of 
trip-hammers  and  a  great  number  of  nail  and  smith  shops. 
Cut  and  hammered  nails,  spades  and  shovels,  card  teeth,  saws, 
scythes,  metal  buttons,  cannon  balls,  bells,  fire  arms,  sheet 
iron  for  tin  ware,  wire,  etc.,  were  made  in  large  quantities." 
In  1804  there  were  ten  blast  furnaces  in  Plymouth  county,  all 
producing  castings  exclusively.  In  1830  only  three  of  these 
were  left — Charlotte,  Federal,  and  Pope's  Point,  all  in  Carver 
township,  and  all  in  operation.  There  were  also  in  1804  ten 
forges  in  the  same  county,  which  were  principally  employed 
in  working  "  old  iron  scraps,"  broken  pots,  kettles,  etc.,  and 
produced  in  all  about  200  tons  of  bar  iron  per  annum. 

Dr.  James  Thacher,  who  was  a  part  owner  of  Federal  fur- 
nace, wrote  in  1804  a  description  of  this  furnace,  which  was 
built  in  1794,  and  is  said  by  him  to  have  been  the  most  valu- 
able furnace  with  which  he  was  acquainted,  the  manufacture 
of  castings  being  "there  prosecuted  to  great  extent  and  ad- 
vantage." The  furnace  was  built  of  stone,  as  were  all  other 
Plymouth  furnaces.  It  was  20  feet  high  and  24  feet  square, 


124  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

its  walls  being  7  feet  thick  and  its  interior  10  feet  in  diameter. 
Charcoal  was  the  only  fuel  used,  and  marine  shells  formed 
the  only  fluxing  material.  The  furnace  was  lined  with  "  fire 
stone  "  composed  of  "  soft  slate."  A  brick  funnel  at  the  top  of 
the  stack  served  "  to  convey  off  the  blaze  and  smoke."  The 
Doctor  continues  his  description  as  follows  : 

At  the  bottom  of  an  arch  in  the  front  of  the  fdrnace  is  an  aperture, 
from  which  the  workmen  remove  the  scoria  and  dip  out  the  metal.  And  in 
another  arch  on  one  side  there  is  a  small  aperture  for  the  insertion  of  the 
pipes  of  two  large  bellows  22  feet  long  and  4  feet  wide,  which  being  kept  in 
constant  alternate  motion  by  the  agency  of  a  water-wheel  25  feet  diameter, 
a  powerful  current  of  air  is  excited ;  and  being  impelled  upon  the  surface 
of  the  fuel  the  fusion  of  the  metal  is  greatly  accelerated.  The  whole  of  this 
machinery  is  included  in  a  large  wooden  building,  affording  accommodation 
to  the  workmen  with  their  apparatus  for  moulding  and  casting. 

The  specific  articles  manufactured  at  the  Federal  furnace  are,  besides 
hollow-ware  of  every  description,  Seymour's  patent  rolls  for  slitting  mills,  of 
a  superior  quality,  cast  in  iron  cylinders,  potash  kettles,  stoves,  fire-backs 
and  jambs,  plates,  gudgeons,  anvils,  large  hammers,  cannon  shot  of  every 
kind,  with  a  vast  variety  of  machinery  for  mills,  etc. 

The  ores  used  in  the  furnaces  and  bloomaries  of  Eastern 
Massachusetts  in  the  eighteenth  century  were  chiefly  native 
bog  and  pond  ores.  Dr.  Thacher  says,  however,  that  in  1804 
"  a  very  considerable  proportion  of  ore  smelted  in  our  furna- 
ces is  procured  from  the  very  productive  mines  at  Egg  Har- 
bor in  the  State  of  New  Jersey,  of  a  reddish  brown  color,  pro- 
ducing from  30  to  40  per  cent,  of  excellent  iron.  The  usual 
price  is  $6.50  per  ton."  He  also  says  that  "reddish  brown" 
ore  in  large  lumps  was  obtained  from  a  mine  on  Martha's 
Vineyard,  "affording  about  25  per  cent,  and  worth  $6  per 
ton."  The  pond  ores  contained  from  20  to  30  per  cent,  of 
iron,  and  the  average  price  was  about  $6  per  ton  at  the  fur- 
nace. Bog  ore,  found  in  swamps  and  other  low  places,  was  of 
a  "  rusty  brown  color,  yielding  about  18  per  cent,  and  worth 
$4  per  ton  at  the  furnace."  The  following  letter  from  the 
Rev.  Isaac  Backus,  of  Middleborough,  dated  July  25,  1794, 
gives  a  description  of  the  manner  in  which  pond  ores  were 
obtained  at  that  time. 

Vast  quantities  of  iron,  both  cast  and  wrought,  have  been  made  in  this 
part  of  the  country  for  more  than  a  hundred  years  past ;  but  it  was  chiefly 
out  of  bog  ore,  until  that  kind  was  much  exhausted  in  these  parts,  and  then 
a  rich  treasure  was  opened  in  Middleborough,  which  had  been  long  hid 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  125 

from  the  inhabitants.  About  the  year  1747  it  was  discovered  that  there  was 
iron  mine  in  the  bottom  of  our  great  pond  at  Assowamset ;  and  after  some 
years  it  became  the  main  ore  that  was  used  in  the  town,  both  at  furnaces 
and  forges,  and  much  of  it  has  been  carried  into  the  neighboring  places  for 
the  same  purpose.  Men  go  out  with  boats,  and  make  use  of  instruments  ^ 
much  like  those  with  which  oysters  are  taken,  to  get  up  the  ore  from  the 
bottom  of  the  pond.  I  am  told  that,  for  a  number  of  years,  a  man  would 
take  up  and  bring  to  shore  two  tons  of  it  in  a  day ;  but  now  it  is  so  much 
exhausted  that  half  a  ton  is  reckoned  a  good  day's  work  for  one  man.  But 
in  an  adjacent  pond  is  now  plenty,  where  the  water  is  twenty  feet  deep,  and 
much  is  taken  up  from  that  depth,  as  well  as  from  shoaler  water.  It  has 
also  been  plenty  in  a  pond  in  the  town  of  Carver,  where  they  have  a  fur- 
nace upon  the  stream  which  runs  from  it.  Much  of  the  iron  which  is  made 
from  this  ore  is  better  than  they  could  make  out  of  bog  ore,  and  some  of  it 
is  as  good  as  almost  any  refined  iron.  The  quantity  of  this  treasure,  which 
hath  been  taken  out  of  the  bottom  of  clear  ponds,  is  said  to  have  been 
sometimes  as  much  as  five  hundred  tons  in  a  year. 

Before  proceeding  further  we  may  here  refer  to  the  first 
steel  works  in  Massachusetts.  In  1750  it  was  officially  re- 
ported that  there  was  then  in  Massachusetts  "  one  furnace  for 
making  steel,"  but  its  location  is  not  given.  The  first  steel 
works  in  Massachusetts  of  which  we  can  obtain  circumstan- 
tial information  were  established  at  Easton,  in  Bristol  county, 
in  1775  or  1776,  by  Eliphalet  Leonard.  In  the  early  part  of 
1826  there  appeared  in  the  Boston  Patriot  a  letter  written  by 
Jonathan  Leonard,  of  Canton,  in  Norfolk  county,  which  we 
find  reprinted  in  the  New  England  Historical  and  Genealogical 
Register  for  October,  1857,  and  from  which  we  take  the  fol- 
lowing extracts. 

As  to  the  making  of  steel,  the  first  attempt  made  in  this  country  so  far 
as  my  knowledge  goes  was  by  my  father,  Eliphalet  Leonard,  at  Easton, 
about  the  year  1775  or  '76.  He  was  led  to  that  attempt  by  the  extreme 
scarcity  of  steel  and  the  difficulty  of  procuring  it  for  his  manufactory  of 
fire-arms,  then  in  great  demand  for  the  defense  of  the  country.  He  con- 
structed several  furnaces,  and  so  far  succeeded  as  to  supply  himself  and 
some  of  the  most  urgent  wants  of  his  neighbors. 

In  1787  I  obtained  further  insight  into  the  business,  and  erected  at 
Easton  a  furnace  capable  of  making  three  tons  at  a  batch.  This  was  con- 
tinued until  1808,  when,  in  consequence  of  the  commercial  restrictions,  I 
erected  another  at  the  same  place  capable  of  making  ten  tons  at  a  batch, 
and  afterwards  from  twenty  to  thirty  tons  a  year.  In  1813  I  erected  an- 
other furnace  at  Canton,  where  I  now  live,  where  I  made  at  times  about 
one  hundred  tons  of  steel  a  year. 

Towards  the  close  of  the  Revolution  Samuel  Downing,  of  Trenton,  New 
Jersey,  made  considerable  blistered  steel.  During  the  progress  of  the  Rev- 
olution a  certain  German  at  Cumberland,  in  Rhode  Island,  made  steel  from 


126  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

the  pig  after  the  mode  of  his  country.  During  the  same  time  some  was 
made  at  Amenia,  in  the  State  of  New  York.  In  1809  a  steel  furnace  was 
put  in  operation  at  Middleborough  and  another  at  Canton  by  Adam  Kins- 
ley, and  another  at  Plymouth.  About  the  year  1799  steel  was  made  at  Can- 
ton by  Leonard  &  Kinsley  after  the  German  manner,  and  afterwards  by 
Dunbar  &  Leonard.  The  manufacture  of  blistered  steel  is  carried  on  ex- 
tensively in  New  York  and  Philadelphia. 

Cast  steel  has  got  much  into  use  within  a  few  years.  Some  was  made 
here  during  the  late  war,  but  it  was  then  difficult  to  obtain  clay  that  would 
endure  a  heat  sufficient  to  melt  and  take  it  out  of  the  fire. 

There  was  one  Daniel  Pettybone  who  pretended  that  he  invented  the 
welding  of  cast  steel  with  borax  and  got  a  patent  for  his  .invention  about 
the  year  1802.  He  put  the  blacksmiths  under  contribution,  and  after  his 
patent  had  run  out  he  petitioned  Congress  to  renew  it.  I  told  them  that 
it  was  an  art  considerably  well  known  among  blacksmiths,  and  I  procured 
several  depositions  from  aged  blacksmiths  to  prove  that  they  had  done  it 
in  this  country  as  early  as  the  year  1772,  and  occasionally  from  that  tune 
to  1819.  Cast  steel  had  been  welded  to  iron  in  Canton  in  1792,  six  years 
before  Pettybone  dated  his  invention.  This  was  done  by  the  use  of  borax. 
It  has  likewise  been  done  by  the  help  of  bog  iron  ore  powrdered  fine  and 
sprinkled  on  the  steel  when  at  a  white  heat,  and  formed  at  that  tempera- 
ture a  kind  of  gluey  (glassy)  substance  which  would  stick  the  bars  together. 

The  steel  referred  to  by  the  writer  of  the  foregoing  letter 
as  having  been  made  by  his  father  and  himself  was  cement- 
ed steel,  otherwise  known  as  blister  steel.  The  statement 
which  he  makes  concerning  the  manufacture  of  steel  "  from 
the  pig,"  "after  the  German  manner,"  is  very  important,  as 
it  shows  that  this  method  of  making  steel  was  in  use  in  this 
country  in  the  last  century  side  by  side  with  the  manufac- 
ture of  blister  steel — a  fact  not  generally  known  in  our  day. 

In  the  same  letter  Mr.  Leonard  gives  the  following  infor- 
mation concerning  the  blast  furnaces  of  Eastern  Massachu- 
setts in  1826 :  "  There  are  if  I  mistake  not  ten  or  twelve  blast 
furnaces  at  this  time  in  the  counties  of  Plymouth  and  Bris- 
tol, and  one  in  Norfolk.  General  Leach  seems  to  have  taken 
the  lead  of  late  years  in  the  furnace  business.  The  iron  made 
from  b'og  ore  at  his  furnaces  in  Easton  and  Foxborough  is 
thought  to  be  softer  and  better  than  in  other  places  for  ma- 
chinery." Bog  ore  was  therefore  used  in  blast  furnaces  in 
Massachusetts  as  late  as  1826.  More  than  thirty  years  ago 
Professor  J.  P.  Lesley  wrote  of  the  old  bog-ore  furnaces  of 
Massachusetts  as  follows :  "  The  old  blast  furnaces  of  Plym- 
outh county,  making  a  poor  iron,  in  very  small  quantities, 
from  an  ochreous  ore  dug  from  the  diluvium  of  the  pond 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  127 

bottoms,  are  almost  forgotten.  Traditions  of  them  remain 
only  as  jests  at  the  primitive  ways  they  were  set  to  work  in. 
One  is  described  as  situated  on  the  bank  of  a  stream  and 
lashed  to  a  large  tree  to  protect  it  from  the  freshets  ;  when  an 
order  came  for  a  few  tons  of  iron  the  neighboring  farmers 
assembled  and  blew  it  in.  Small  furnaces  and  poor  ore  they 
served  their  day  and  are  forgotten  ;  obliterated  by  the  over- 
rush  of  two  commercial  iron  deluges,  one  from  the  English 
importers  and  the  other  from  the  anthracite  manufacturers." 
In  1721  Samuel  Bissell,  a  blacksmith  of  Newport,  Rhode 
Island,  received  a  loan  of  two  hundred  pounds  from  the  colo- 
nial treasury  to  enable  him  to  carry  on  the  manufacture  of 
nails.  In  1735  Samuel  "Waldo  erected  a  furnace  and  foundry 
on  the  Pawtuxet  river,  in  Rhode  Island,  which  were  after- 
wards known  as  Hope  furnace.  These  are  said  to  have  been 
the  most  important  iron  works  in  the  State  during  the  eigh- 
teenth century.  Cannon  and  other  castings  were  made  here. 
During  the  Revolution  they  were  active  in  producing  cannon, 
cannon  balls,  and  other  munitions  of  war.  Hope  furnace 
was^  located  on  the  north  branch  of  the  Pawtuxet.  In  1765 
Stephen  Hopkins,  a  signer  of  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence, "  began  to  work  a  bed  of  iron  ore  in  the  southeastern 
part  of  Scituate,"  as  we  learn  from  his  biography  written  by 
William  E.  Foster,  and  in  1769,  as  we  are  informed  by  the 
same  authority,  he  began  the  manufacture  of  iron  at  Hope 
furnace  in  company  with  Nicholas  and  Moses  Brown  and 
Israel  Wilkinson.  About  the  year  1735  three  furnaces  were 
erected  in  Cumberland  township,  in  the  northeastern  part  of 
the  State,  but  they  seem  to  have  been  abandoned  before  the 
Revolution.  They  made  "  cannon,  bombs,  and  bullets  "  dur- 
ing the  French  war  of  1755.  In  1741  iron  works  were  in 
operation  on  the  south  branch  of  the  Pawtuxet  river,  in  the 
town  of  Warwick,  "for  the  refining  of  iron."  They  were 
owned  by  the  sons  of  Jabez  Greene.  One  of  these  sons  was 
Nathanael  Greene,  the  father  of  Major  General  Nathanael 
Greene  of  the  Revolution,  who  was  himself  trained  to  work 
on  the  farm  and  at  the  forge.  In  1770  he  was  in  charge 
of  a  forge  at  Coventry,  in  Rhode  Island,  which  was  known 
as  Greene's  forge.  In  1789  a  rolling  and  slitting  mill  was 
established  near  Providence,  on  one  of  the  branches  of  Provi- 


128  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

dence  river,  and  before  1800  a  rolling  and  slitting  mill  had 
been  established  at  Pawtucket  Falls  and  other  iron-manu- 
facturing enterprises  in  various  parts  of  the  State.  Bishop 
says  that  "  manufactures  of  iron,  including  bar  and  sheet 
iron,  steel,  nail  rods  and  nails,  farming  implements,  stoves, 
pots,  and  other  castings  and  household  utensils,  iron  works 
for  shipbuilders,  anchors,  and  bells  formed  the  largest  branch 
of  productive  industry  in  the  State  toward  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  century." 

The  iron  made  in  Rhode  Island  in  the  eighteenth  century 
was  obtained  from  native  bog  ore  in  large  part,  but  native 
hematite  and  magnetic  ore  were  also  used,  the  latter  coming 
from  Cumberland  hill,  which  has  been  referred  to  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapter.  We  give  below  some  extracts  from  a  letter 
to  the  New  York  Tribune,  written  in  October,  1873,  and  dated 
at  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  which  contained  a  historical  ac- 
count of  Cumberland  hill,  or  Cumberland  iron  mountain. 

During  the  French  war,  as  early  as  1755,  the  inhabitants  of  this  colony 
made  from  the  ore  from  this  very  mine,  mixed  with  a  hematite  ore  from 
Cranston,  Rhode  Island,  cannon  which  were  used  in  the  service  against  the 
French  and  Indians,  and  thus  it  has  aided  in  carrying  out  the  far-reaching 
policy  of  the  great  Pitt.  In  1800,  also,  cannon  were  again  cast  from  these 
ores  at  Hope,  a  small  village  on  the  Pawtuxet  river,  in  this  State,  for  John 
Brown  of  Providence,  who  had  a  contract  with  the  Government  at  this  date 
to  furnish  it  guns ;  and,  what  is  singular,  the  guns  were  cast  hollow,  a  sup- 
posed modern  invention.  At  the  foot  of  the  mine  is  a  meeting-house,  with 
the  date  "  A.  D.  1700  "  over  the  door,  the  beams  and  joists  of  which  would 
to-day  be  too  unwieldy  even  for  ship  timber.  Though  Rhode  Island  people 
have  not  appeared  to  recognize  the  importance  of  this  possession,  still 
many  places,  such  as  Easton,  in  Massachusetts,  which  early  entered  into 
the  production  of  iron,  have  regularly  carted  from  this  mine  their  supply. 

Litchfield  county,  in  Northwestern  Connecticut,  contains 
hematite  iron-ore  mines  of  great  value,  from  which  the  ore 
for  the  celebrated  Salisbury  iron  has  been  taken  for  over  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years.  As  early  as  1734  a  bloomary  forge 
was  erected  at  Lime  Rock,  in  Litchfield  county,  by  Thomas 
Lamb,  which  produced  from  500  to  700  pounds  of  iron  per 
day.  A  blast  furnace  was  afterwards  added  to  this  forge  at 
Lime  Rock,  and  it  is  still  active  in  1890.  About  1748  a  forge 
was  erected  at  the  village  of  Lakeville,  then  called  Furnace 
village,  in  the  same  county,  and  in  1762  John  Haseltine, 
Samuel  Forbes,  and  Ethan  Allen  purchased  the  property  and 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  129 

built  a  blast  furnace  at  Lakeville,  but  soon  afterwards  sold  it 
to  Charles  and  George  Caldwell,  of  Hartford.  It  made  two 
and  a  half  tons  of  iron  in  twenty-four  hours,  and  three  tons 
of  ore  and  250  bushels  of  charcoal  were  used  per  ton  of  iron. 
Its  blowing  apparatus  consisted  of  a  pair  of  leather  bellows 
driven  by  a  water-wheel.  In  1768  the  furnace  was  sold  to 
Richard  Smith,  of  Hartford.  Smith  was  a  royalist  and  fled 
to  England  during  the  Revolution,  but  his  furnace  was  used 
to  produce  large  quantities  of  cannon,  cannon  balls,  shells, 
etc.,  for  the  Continental  army.  After  the  Revolution  it  made 
cannon  for  the  navy,  potash  kettles  weighing  nearly  half  a 
ton  each,  and  pig  iron  for  forges  and  foundries.  This  fur- 
nace was  abandoned  in  1830  or  1831,  as  we  are  informed  by 
Samuel  S.  Robbins,  president  of  the  Lime  Rock  Iron  Com- 
pany, now  in  his  87th  year.  Colonel  Ethan  Allen,  one  of  the 
original  owners  of  Lakeville  furnace,  was  one  of  the  conspic- 
uous figures  of  the  Revolution.  He  was  born  in  Litchfield 
county,  but  remov'ed  to  Vermont  while  still  a  young  man. 

A  bloomary  forge  on  Mount  Riga,  in  Litchfield  county, 
was  built  about  1781  by  Abner  or  Peter  Woodin.  It  was  af- 
terwards owned  by  Daniel  Ball,  and  was  called  Ball's  forge. 
About  1806  Seth  King  and  John  Kelsey  commenced  to  build 
a  furnace  on  Mount  Riga,  but  they  were  not  able  to  finish 
it,  and  in  1810  it  fell  into  the  hands  of  Holley  &  Coffing, 
who  completed  it  in  that  year  and  operated  it  for  many  years. 
Ttfe  forge  and  furnace  have  long  been  abandoned.  The  lat- 
ter was  in  operation  as  late  as  1856. 

About  thirty  furnaces  have  been  built  and  operated  with- 
in a  radius  of  thirty  miles  of  Lakeville,  a  few  of  which  were 
in  New  York  and  Massachusetts,  but  the  majority  were  in 
Connecticut.  At  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  Litch- 
field county  contained  many  bloomaries,  which  made  iron 
directly  from  the  ore,  and  three  slitting  mills.  At  the  same 
time  this  county  was  so  prominent  in  the  manufacture  of 
nails  that  only  Plymouth  and  Bristol  counties  in  Massachu- 
setts, of  all  the  nail-making  districts  in  the  country,  e^tce^ded 
its  production.  The  iron  of  Litchfield  county  is  now  used 
entirely  for  foundry  purposes,  and  most  of  it  is  used  in  the 
manufacture  of  car  wheels.  The  first  foundry  for  melting 
pig  iron  in  the  Salisbury  district  was  built  at  Lime  Rock 


130  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

about  1830  and  soon  afterwards  was  purchased  by  Milo  Bar- 
num, the  founder  of  the  present  Barnum  Richardson  Com- 
pany, and  the  father  of  Hon.  William  H.  Barnum.  Charcoal 
is  the  only  fuel  used  in  the  blast  furnaces  of  this  district. 

The  annual  meeting  of  the  United  States  Association  of 
Charcoal  Iron  Workers  in  October,  1885,  took  place  at  New 
York,  but  an  excursion  was  made  to  the  Salisbury  region 
in  Connecticut.  While  at  Lakeville  the  local  committee  had 
arranged  for  an  address  of  welcome  from  ex-Governor  A.  H. 
Holley,  a  resident  of  the  town,  who  had  all  his  life  been  an 
iron  worker,  and  whose  son  was  the  late  A.  L.  Holley.  Ill- 
ness prevented  Governor  Holley  from  attending,  but  he  sent 
a  letter  of  welcome,  from  which  the  following  is  an  extract. 

You  are  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  one  of  the  oldest  iron  mines  in 
this  country,  if  not  the  oldest,  it  having  been  wrought  more  or  less  for 
about  one  hundred  and  fifty  years.  The  iron  produced  from  it  has  been 
proved,  by  various  tests  at  the  armories,  arsenals,  and  navy-yards  of  the  na- 
tion, to  have  greater  tensile  strength  and  resisting  jx>wer  than  any  other 
ever  produced.  This  may  seem  like  an  arrogant  boast,  but  the  Government, 
some  years  since,  ordered  and  received  samples  of  the  most  noted  irons, 
foreign  and  domestic,  for  the  purpose  of  testing  their  strength,  and  the  Sal- 
isbury iron  endured  strains  that  no  other  dfd  or  could. 

You  are  also  within  a  thousand  fee/  of  the  site  of  the  oldest  char- 
coal furnace  in  all  the  region  about  us,  erected  between  the  years  1760  and 
1770.  The  first  cannon  cast  in  the  United  States  for  service  in  the  Revo- 
lution were  made  therein.  A  portion  of  them  wrere  used  to  arm  the  ship 
Constitution,  the  old  iron-sides  of  the  American  navy.  Every  one  of  them 
bore  the  test  required  by  the  inspectors,  and  none  were  ever  broken  either 
by  our  own  powder  and  balls  or  by  those  of  the  enemy.  Since  the  opening 
and  continued  use  of  the  old  mine  above  referred  to  others  of  great  value 
have  been  developed,  within  a  circuit  of  fifty  miles,  which  produce  iron  of 
an  exceptionally  good  quality. 

Oldmixon,  in  his  British  Empire  in  America,  mentions  "  a 
small  iron  mill "  as  existing  at  Branford,  in  New  Haven 
county,  in  1741,  on  a  small  stream  running  into  Long  Island 
sound,  and  he  adds  that  on  many  of  the  small  streams  and 
branches  of  the  rivers  which  fall  into  the  sound  "  bloomaries 
and  small  works  for  a  variety  of  manufactures  in  iron  were 
established,  some  of  them  quite  early."  The  bloomaries  were 
in  part  supplied  with  bog  ore,  "  dug  near  them,"  and  in  part 
with  better  ores  obtained  elsewhere.  Bishop  says  that  in 
1794  a  slitting  mill  and  other  iron  works  had  been  erected 
in  East  Hartford,  a  forge  at  Glastonbury,  and  two  furnaces  at 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  131 

Stafford  "  which  made  sufficient  hollow  and  cast  iron  wares 
for  the  whole  State."  Lesley  says  that  there  were  at  one  time, 
about  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  three  furnaces 
on  a  branch  of  the  Willimantic  river,  in  Stafford,  in  East- 
ern Connecticut,  near  the  Massachusetts  line,  a  mile  or  two 
apart.  Three  forges  near  them  converted  their  pig  iron  into 
bar  iron.  Hebron  furnace  was  south  of  the  above-mentioned 
furnaces,  and  Enfield  forge  stood  a  few  miles  east  of  Windsor 
Locks.  All  of  these  furnaces  and  forges  were  stopped  about 
1837,  when  Scotch  pig  iron  began  to  come  into  the  country 
as  a  substitute  for  foundry  pig  iron  of  domestic  manufacture. 
Connecticut  was  probably  the  first  of  the  colonies  to  make 
steel.  In  1728  Samuel  Higley,  of  Simsbury,  and  Joseph  Dew- 
ey,  of  Hebron,  in  Hartford  county,  represented  to  the  legis- 
lature that  the  first-named  had,  "  with  great  pains  and  cost, 
found  out  and  obtained  a  curious  art,  by  which  to  convert, 
change,  or  transmute  common  iron  into  good  steel,  sufficient 
for  any  use,  and  was  the  very  first  that  ever  performed  such 
an  operation  in  America."  The  certificates  of  several  smiths, 
who  had  made  a  trial  of  the  steel  and  pronounced  it  good, 
were  produced.  He  and  Joseph  Dewrey  were  granted  the  ex- 
clusive right  for  ten  years  "  of  practicing  the  business  or  trade 
of  steel-making."  A  "steel  furnace"  was  owned  by  Aaron 
Eliot,  of  Killingworth,  in  Middlesex  county,  previous  to  1750, 
and*  in  1761  the  Rev.  Jared  Eliot,  of  the  same  place,  father 
of  the  above-mentioned  Aaron  Eliot,  and  grandson  of  John 
Eliot,  the  apostle  to  the  Indians,  succeeded  in  producing  in 
a  common  bloomary  forge,  from  83  pounds  of  black  magnet- 
ic sand,  a  bar  of  excellent  iron,  weighing  50  pounds,  and  in 
his  son's  furnace  a  part  of  the  bar  was  converted  into  good 
steel.  For  producing  this  iron  he  was  awarded  a  gold  medal 
in  1762  by  the  London  Society  of  Arts,  which  is  now  in  the 
possession  of  Charles  G.  Elliott,  of  Goshen,  New  York.  It  is 
inscribed :  "  To  the  Rev.  Jared  Eliot,  M.  A.,  of  N.  England. 
MDCCLXII.  For  producing  malleable  iron  from  the  Ameri- 
can black  sand."  The  medal  was  sent  to  Mr.  Eliot  from  Lon- 
don in  1764  "  by  Thos.  Fisher,  to  the  care  of  our  friend,  Ben. 
Franklin."  This  sand,  which  is  found  in  the  southern  parts 
of  Connecticut,  as  well  as  in  some  other  States,  never  receiv- 
ed much  further  attention  for  conversion  into  iron  or  steel. 


132  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Aaron  Eliot's  "steel  furnace"  was  doubtless  a  cementation 
furnace.  In  1750  it  was  officially  reported  that  there  was 
then  only  one  "furnace  for  making  steel"  in  Connecticut, 
and  this  was  probably  Eliot's  furnace. 

Iron  ore  was  discovered  near  Portsmouth,  in  New  Hamp- 
shire, as  early  as  1634,  some  of  which  was  sent  to  England, 
but  we  find  no  evidence  that  its  discovery  led  to  the  establish- 
ment of  any  iron  works  in  that  colony.  The  manufacture  of 
iron  in  this  State  probably  dates  fr^m  about  1750,  when  sev- 
eral bog-ore  bloomaries  were  in  existence  on  Lamper  Eel  riv- 
er, but  were  soon  discontinued.  About  the  time  of  the  Revolu- 
tion there  were  a  few  bloomaries  in  operation  in  New  Hamp- 
shire. In  1791  mention  is  made  of  iron  works  at  Exeter.  At 
Furnace  village  the  magnetic  iron  ore  of  Winchester  was  first 
smelted  in  1795  by  a  Rhode  Island  company.  Franconia  fur- 
nace, at  Franconia,  was,built  in  1811  by  a  company  which  was 
organized  in  1805.  This  furnace  was  abandoned  in  1865,  and 
there  is  now  no  blast  furnace  in  the  State,  nor  any  other  en- 
terprise for  the  manufacture  of  iron  or  steel  except  the  steel 
works  of  the  Nashua  Iron  and  Steel  Company,  at  Nashua. 

Maine  had  a  few  bloomary  forges  in  York  county  during 
the  Revolution  and  for  some  years  afterwards,  but  she  has  had 
but  few  blast  furnaces.  A  small  furnace,  capable  of  yielding 
a  ton  and  a  half  of  iron  daily,  was  erected  at  Shapleigh,  in 
York  county,  about  1838.  It  was  used  to  produce  castings 
from  bog  ore,  and  cost  only  $13,000.  A  larger  furnace,  called 
Katahdin,  was  built  in  1845  in  Piscataquis  county,  and*  was 
lately  active.  This  is  the  only  furnace  now  in  the  State. 
Among  its  projectors  and  first  owners  was  the  Hon.  John 
L.  Hayes,  a  native  of  Maine,  who  afterwards  became  distin- 
guished as  a  writer  on  economic  subjects  and  as  the  secretary 
of  the  National  Association  of  Wool  Manufacturers,  and  who 
died  at  his  home  in  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  on  April  18, 
1887,  aged  75  years.  He  was  born  at  South  Berwick,  Maine, 
on  April  13,  1812.  A  forge  was  erected  near  Katahdin  fur- 
nace soon  after  1845.  In  1853  it  made  700  tons  of  blooms. 
It  was  burned  down  about  1855.  There  were  in  1884  two 
rolling  mills  in  Maine,  one  at  Portland  and  one  at  Pembroke, 
but  the  Pembroke  mill  has  since  been  abandoned. 

The   manufacture   of   iron  was   commenced    in  Vermont 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  133 

about  1775.  Large  deposits  of  iron  ores  similar  to  those  of 
Western  Massachusetts  and  Western  Connecticut  had  been 
found  in  the  southern  and  western  parts  of  the  State.  In 
Rutland  county  ore  was  mined  before  1785.  In  1794  there 
were  fourteen  forges,  three  furnaces,  and  a  slitting  mill  in  this 
county.  In  other  counties  there  were  seven  forges  in  1794— 
one  in  Bennington,  four  in  Addison,  and  two  in  Chittenden. 
Before  1800  other  forges  and  a  slitting  mill  were  added  in  this 
State ;  possibly  a  few  furnaces.  The  township  of  Randolph, 
in  Orange  county,  had  two  forges  and  a  slitting  mill  at  this 
period.  About  the  beginning  of  the  present  century  there 
were  twenty  bloomaries  in  the  neighborhood  of  Vergennes, 
in  Addison  county,  all  built  with  Boston  capital.  The  promi- 
nence of  Vermont  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  has  now  been 
lost.  In  1890  the  East  Middlebury  forge,  its  only  remaining 
iron  enterprise,  was  finally  abandoned. 

The  manufacture  of  nails  was  one  of  the  household  in- 
dustries of  New  England  during  the  eighteenth  century.  In 
a  speech  in  Congress  in  1789  Fisher  Ames  said :  "  It  has  be- 
come common  for  the  country  people  in  Massachusetts  to  erect 
small  forges  in  their  chimney  corners ;  and  in  winter,  and  in 
evenings,  when  little  other  work  can  be  done,  great  quantities 
of  nails  are  made,  even  by  children.  These  people  take  the 
rod  iron  of  ^the  merchant  and  return  him  the  nails,  and  in 
consequence  of  this  easy  mode  of  barter  the  manufacture  is 
prodigiously  great."  In  a  description  of  the  town  of  Middle- 
borough,  in  Plymouth  county,  Massachusetts,  written  in  1793 
by  Nehemiah  Bennet,  it  is  mentioned  that  "  the  most  common 
and  general  employment  of  the  inhabitants  of  said  town  is 
agriculture,  which  seems  to  be  increasing ;  though  there  are  a 
number  of  mechanicks.  Nailing,  or  the  business  of  making 
nails,  is  carried  on  largely  in  the  winters  by  the  farmers  and 
young  men,  who  have  but  little  other  business  at  that  season 
of  the  year."  When  Jacob  Perkins,  of  Newburyport,  Massa- 
chusetts, invented  about  1790  his  nail-cutting  machine,  which 
was  patented  in  1795  and  speedily  followed  by  other  inven- 
tions for  the  same  purpose,  the  occupation  of  maSing  nails  in 
the  chimney  corner  met  with  a  serious  check.  And  with  this 
check  to  the  making  of  nails  in  chimney  corners  the  work 
of  the  slitting  mills  in  New  England  rapidly  declined. 


134  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

• 

The  manufacture  of  hand-made  tacks  was  also  a  New  Eng- 
land household  industry  during  the  last  century,  and  down  to 
about  fifty  years  ago.  A  writer  in  the  Furniture  Trade  Jour- 
nal thus  describes  this  long  extinct  industry :  "  In  the  queer- 
shaped,  homely  farm-houses,  or  the  little,  contracted  shops  of 
certain  New  England  villages,  the  industrious  and  frugal  de- 
scendants of  the  Pilgrims  toiled  providently  through  the  long 
winter  months  at  beating  into  shape  the  little  nails  which 
play  so  useful  a  part  in  modern  industry.  A  small  anvil 
served  to  beat  the  wire  or  strip  of  iron  into  shape  and  point 
it ;  a  vice,  worked  by  the  foot,  clutched  it  between  jaws  fur- 
nished with  a  gauge  to  regulate  the  length,  leaving  a  certain 
portion  projecting,  which,  when  beaten  flat  by  a  hammer, 
formed  the  head.  By  this  process  a  man  might  make,  toil- 
somely, perhaps  2,000  tacks  per  day."  New  England  is  now 
prominent  in  the  manufacture  of  tacks  in  this  country  by 
machinery.  More  than  two-thirds  of  our  tack  industry  is 
controlled  by  Massachusetts  and  fully  three-fourths  by  all  of 
New  England.  Taunton  is  the  centre  of  the  New  England 
tack  industry. 

The  earliest  notice  we  have  seen  of  a  machine  for  cutting 
nails  occurs  in  Arnold's  History  of  the  State  of  Rhode  Island. 
The  author  says  :  "  It  is  said  that  the  first  cold  cut  nail  in 
the  world  was  made  in  1777  by  Jeremiah  Wilkinson,  of  Cum- 
berland, Rhode  Island,  who  died  in  1832,  at  the  advanced  age 
of  90  years."  Bishop  gives  a  description  of  Wilkinson's  very 
crude  attempts  to  make  cut  nails  and  tacks.  Speaking  of 
Wilkinson's  tacks  he  says  :  "  They  were  first  cut  by  a  pair  of 
shears  (still  preserved)  from  an  old  chest  lock,  and  afterwards 
headed  in  a  smith's  vice.  Sheet-iron  was  afterwards  used  and 
the  process  extended  to  small  nails,  which  he  appears  to  have 
been  one  of  the  first  to  attempt.  They  were  cut  from  old 
Spanish  hoops,  and  headed  in  a  clamp  or  vice  by  hand.  Pins 
and  needles  were  made  by  the  same  person  during  the  Revo- 
lution, from  wire  drawn  by  himself." 

All  the  bloomaries  and  refinery  forges  and  old-style  fur- 
naces of  New  England  have  now  disappeared,  and  in  their 
stead  have  grown  up  reproductive  iron  industries  of  almost 
endless  variety  and  vast  extent,  which  employ  large  numbers 
of  skilled  mechanics  and  add  greatly  to  the  material  wealth 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  135 

of  the  country.  The  machine  shops,  nail  and  tack  factories, 
hardware  establishments,  foundries,  locomotive  works,  bridge 
works,  cutlery  works,  file  and  screw  factories,  agricultural 
implement  works,  axe  and  shovel  factories,  wire  works,  etc., 
together  with  a  few  steel  works,  modern  blast  furnaces,  and  - 
rolling  mills,  form  to-day  a  striking  contrast  to  the  bog-ore 
bloomaries,  not  much  larger  than  a  blacksmith's  fire,  and  the 
small  charcoal  furnaces  and  chimney-corner  nail  factories  of 
the  last  century.  "All  that,"  says  Lesley,  "has  given  way 
and  disappeared  before  the  inventive  spirit  of  New  England, 
sustained  and, incited  by  the  wealth  of  its  commercial  cities." 
It  may  also  with  great  propriety  be  added  that  it  has  "  given 
way"  partly  because  of  the  exhaustion  -  of  bog  ores,  partly 
because  of  the  exhaustion  of  timber  for  charcoal,  and  partly 
because  many  of  the  streams  which  formerly  furnished  an 
abundance  of  water  power  are  now  either  dried  up  or  fur- 
nish a  very  small  volume  of  water.  All  the  primitive  con- 
ditions have  greatly  changed  and  now  belong  to  ancient  his- 
tory. There  is  a  new  era  in  New  England. 

Hon.  William  H.  Barnum,  for  many  years  a  member  of 
Congress,  and  a  United  States  Senator  from  1876  to  1879,  was 
born  at  Boston  Corners,  Columbia  county,  New  York,  on  Sep- 
tember 17, 1818,  and  died  at  Lime  Rock,  Connecticut,  on  April 
30,  1889.  He  was  one  of  the  most  prominent  iron  manufac- 
turers of  New  England. 


136  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

CHAPTER   XII. 
EARLY  IRON  ENTERPRISES  IN  NEW  YORK. 

DURING  the  rule  of  the  Dutch  in  New  York,  from  their 
first  settlement  on  Manhattan  Island  in  1614  to  their  surren- 
der to  the  English  in  1664,  iron  ore  was  found  in  various 
places,  but  no  effort  to  manufacture  iron  is  known  to  have 
been  made.  Nor  does  it  appear  that  the  English  established 
any  iron  works  in  the  province  until  some  time  after  the  be- 
ginning of  the  succeeding  century.  A  Parliamentary  report, 
quoted  by  Pitkin  in  his  Statistical  Vieiv  of  the  Commerce  of 
the  United  States  of  America,  printed  in  1816,  states  that  there 
were  no  manufactures  in  New  York  as  late  as  1731  "  that 
deserve  mentioning."  Bishop  quotes  Governor  Cosby  as  re- 
porting in  1734  that  "  as  yet  no  iron  work  is  set  up  in  this 
province."  The  Dutch  were  never  noted  as  ironworkers  in 
their  old  home  in  Holland. 

The  first  iron  works  in  New  York  of  which  we  have 
authentic  information  were  "  set  up,"  according  to  Bishop, 
a  short  time  prior  to  1740,  on  Ancram  creek,  in  Columbia 
county,  about  fourteen  miles  east  of  the  Hudson  river,  by 
Philip  Livingston,  the  owner  of  the  Livingston  manor,  and 
the  father  of  Philip  the  signer  of  the  Declaration.  These 
works  at  first  embraced  only  a  bloomary,  but  as  early  as  1750 
they  appear  to  have  embraced  a  blast  furnace  and  a  refinery 
forge.  The  supply  of  ore  was  obtained  mainly  from  the  "  ore 
hill"  in  Salisbury  township,  Litchfield  county,  Connecticut, 
of  which  Mr.  Livingston  was  a  principal  owner,  and  which 
had  been  developed  a  few  years  previously.  The  ore  mines 
were  about  twelve  miles  distant  from  the  Ancram  works. 
Other  sources  of  ore  supply  were  found  in  the  eastern  part 
of  the  manor,  near  the  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  lines. 
Notwithstanding  the  inconvenient  location  of  the  works,  at  a 
considerable  distance  from  the  mines  and  also  from  the  near- 
est point  of  shipment  on  the  Hudson  river  for  the  manufac- 
tured iron,  they  were  prosperous  until  after  the  Revolution. 
In  1756  they  are  said  to  have  been  the  only  iron  works  in  the 


IRON   IX   ALL    AGES.  137 

province  that  were  then  in  operation,  although  others  had 
been  undertaken.  Of  these  silent  or  unfortunate  enterprises 
Bishop  mentions  two  furnaces  in  the  manor  of  Cortland,  and 
"  several  bloomaries  which  had  not  been  worked  for  several 
years."  At  Marysburg,  in  the  Livingston  manor,  were  some 
bloomary  forges  which  were  operated  about  the  time  of  the 
Revolution. 

Peter  Kalm,  the  Swedish  traveler,  writing  in  1748,  says  of 
the  commerce  of  New  York  :  "  Of  late  years  they  have  ship- 
ped a  quantity  of  iron  to  England."  Some  of  this  iron  was 
doubtless  made  in  Connecticut  and  New  Jersey.  Douglass,  in 
his  British  Settlements,  written  in  1750,  speaking  of  New  York, 
says :  "  The  article  of  iron  in  pigs  and  bars  is  a  growing 
affair." 

Bishop  says  that  iron  works  were  established  in  Orange 
county  prior  to  1750,  but  by  whom  he  does  not  state.  In 
1750  Governor  Clinton  reported  that,  at  a  place  called  Wa- 
wayanda,  in  Orange  county,  about  twenty-six  miles  from  the 
Hudson,  there  was  a  plating-forge  with  a  tilt-hammer,  which 
had  been  built  four  or  five  years  before,  but  was  not  then  in 
use.  It  was  the  property  of  Lawrence  Scrawley,  a  blacksmith. 
"  It  was  the  only  mill  of  that  kind  in  the  province.  There 
was  no  rolling  or  slitting  mill  or  steel  furnace  at  that  time 
in  the  province." 

In  1750  a  vein  of  magnetic  ore  was  discovered  on  Sterling 
mountain,  in  Orange  county,  and  in  1751  Ward  &  Colton 
built  a  furnace  at  the  outlet  of  Sterling  pond.  In  Eager's 
History  of  Orange  County  it  is  stated  that  "  at  the  early  estab- 
lishment of  this  furnace  the  charcoal  used  was  transported  sev- 
eral miles  on  the  backs  of  horses  from  the  mountains  where 
it  was  burned,  there  being  no  roads  at  the  time."  Bishop 
says  that  in  1752  "  Abel  Noble,  from  Bucks  county,  Pennsyl- 
vania, erected  a  forge  in  Monroe,  near  the  furnace,  at  which 
anchors  are  said  to  have  been  made."  Eager  says  that  the 
first  anchor  made  in  New  York  was  made  at  this  forge  in 
1753.  In  1765  William  Hawkhurst  published  an  advertise- 
ment stating  that  he  had  lately  erected  "  a  finery  and  great 
hammer  for  refining  the  Sterling  pig  iron  into  bars,"  but 
the  location  of  this  enterprise  is  not  mentioned. 

The  furnace  of  Ward  &  Colton  and  the  forge  of  Abel  No- 


138  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

ble  fell  into  the  hands  of  Peter  Townsend  before  the  Revolu- 
tion. They  had  been  named  the  Sterling  iron  works,  presum- 
ably after  Lord  Stirling,  the  owner  of  the  land,  who  became 
a  general  in  the  Continental  army,  and  who  was  engaged  in 
the  manufacture  of  iron  in  New  Jersey  before  the  Revolution. 
He  may  have  been  a  part  owner  of  the  Orange  county  en- 
terprises. (The  Sterling  works  have  always  been  spelled  as 
here  given,  but  Lord  Stirling's  name  was  differently  spelled.) 
In  1773  Mr.  Townsend  made  anchors  at  Sterling.  We  are 
informed  by  A.  W.  Humphreys  that  the  anchors  of  the 
United  States  frigate  Constitution  were  made  here,  and  also 
the  anchors  for  the  first  ships  of  war  that  carried  the  stars 
and  stripes.  In  1777  "the  Townsends"  had  two  forges  with 
eight  fires.  In  1776  Mr.  Townsend,  according  to  Bishop,  "pro- 
duced the  first  steel  in  the  province,  at  first  from  pig  and 
afterwards  from  bar  iron,  in  the  German  manner."  Bishop 
says  that  "  the  first  blister  steel  made  in  the  State  was  made 
by  Peter  Townsend,  Jr.,  in  1810,  from  ore  of  the  Long  mine 
on  the  Sterling  estate,"  but  the  steel  made  by  the  elder  Town- 
send  in  1776  from  bar  iron  was  doubtless  blister  steel.  The 
Long  mine  was  discovered  in  1761  by  David  Jones.  Other 
valuable  mines  than  those  mentioned  were  discovered  and 
opened  on  the  Sterling  estate  in  the  last  century.  In  1777  a 
second  Sterling  furnace  was  built  by  "the  Townsends,"  and 
in  1806  Southfield  furnace  was  built  by  them  about  six  miles 
distant  from  the  Sterling  mines,  and  it  is  still  standing.  The 
two  early  Sterling  furnaces  have  been  replaced  by  one  mod- 
ern furnace. 

Other  mines  of  iron  ore  were  discovered  in  Orange  county 
during  the  last  century,  and  many  furnaces  and  forges  were 
built  in  connection  with  them  which  have  long  been  aban- 
doned. In  1756  there  was  a  Forest  of  Dean  furnace  five  miles 
west  of  Fort  Montgomery,  which  was  supplied  with  ore  from 
the  Forest  of  Dean  mine,  near  wrhich  it  stood.  The  furnace 
was  abandoned  twenty-one  years  later.  Eager  says  that  "  Cap- 
tain Solomon  Townsend,  a  cousin  of  Peter  Townsend,  and  who 
married  his  daughter  Anne  in  1783,  purchased  the  mountain 
estate  adjoining  that  of  his  father-in-law,  which  he  named 
Augusta,  and  established  the  iron  works,  anchory,  forges,  etc., 
at  the  place."  These  works  were  on  the  Ramapo,  three  miles 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  139 

above  the  Orange  county  line,  in  Orange  county.  There  was 
a  forge  and  anchory  on  Murderer's  creek  during  the  Revolu- 
tion, owned  by  Samuel  Brewster  ;  after  the  war  they  passed 
into  the  hands  of  his  son-in-law,  Jonas  Williams.  Queens- 
borough  furnace,  which  wrent  out  of  blast  about  1800,  and 
which  was  built  to  make  pig  iron  and  not  castings,  was  locat- 
ed about  two  and  a  half  miles  southwest  of  Fort  Montgom- 
ery. A  furnace  was  in  operation  at  Craigsville  during  the 
Revolution.  On  the  stream  issuing  from  Hazzard's  pond 
there  was  a  furnace  named  Woodbury  about  the  beginning 
of  this  century.  Greenwood  furnace,  in  Orange  county,  was 
erected  in  1811  by  the  Messrs.  Cunningham.  In  1871  it  was 
the  only  charcoal  furnace  in  blast  in  Southern  New  York ; 
since  that  year  it  also  has  been  silent.  During  the  last  cent- 
ury Orange  county  was  the  chief  seat  of  the  iron  manufac- 
ture in  New  York. 

The  following  account  of  the  great  iron  chain  which  was 
suspended  across  the  Hudson  river  in  1778,  to  prevent  the 
passage  of  the  British  vessels,  is  compiled  from  Benson  J. 
Lossing's  Field  Book  of  tJie  Revolution. 

At  the  close  of  1779  West  Point  was  the  strongest  military  post  in  Amer- 
ica. In  addition  to  the  batteries  that  stood  menacingly  upon  the  hill  tops, 
the  river  was  obstructed  by  an  enormous  iron  chain.  The  iron  of  which 
this  chain  was  constructed  was  wrought  from  ore  of  equal  parts  from  the 
Sterling  and  Long  mines,  in  Orange  county.  The  chain  was  manufactured 
by  Peter  Townsend,  of  Chester,  at  the  Sterling  iron  works,  in  the  same 
county,  which  were  situated  about  twenty-five  miles  back  of  West  Point. 
The  general  superintendent  of  the  work,  as  engineer,  was  Captain  Thomas 
Machin,  who  afterwards  assisted  in  the  engineering  operations  at  Yorktown, 
when  Cornwallis  was  captured.  The  chain  was  completed  about  the  middle 
of  April,  1778,  and  on  the  1st  of  May  it  was  stretched  across  the  river  and 
secured. 

Colonel  Timothy  Pickering,  accompanied  by  Captain  Machin,  arrived  at 
the  house  of  Mr.  Townsend  late  on  a  Saturday  night  in  March  of  that  year, 
to  engage  him  to  make  the  chain.  Townsend  readily  agreed  to  construct  it, 
and  in  a  violent  snow-storm,  amid  the  darkness  of  the  night,  the  parties  set 
out  for  the  Sterling  iron  works.  At  daylight  on  Sunday  morning  the  forges 
were  in  operation.  New  England  teamsters  carried  the  links,  as  fast  as  they 
were  finished,  to  West  Point,  and  in  the  space  of  six  weeks  the  whole  chain 
was  completed.  It  weighed  180  tons. 

The  chain  was  stretched  across  the  river  at  the  narrowest  point  between 
the  rocks  just  below  the  steamboat  landing  and  Constitution  Island  oppo- 
site. It  was  fixed  to  huge  blocks  on  each  shore,  and  under  the  cover  of 
batteries  on  both  sides  of  the  river.  The  remains  of  these  are  still  visible. 


140  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

"  It  is  buoyed  up,"  says  Dr.  Thacher,  writing  in  1 780,  "  by  very  large  logs  of 
about  sixteen  feet  long,  pointed  at  the  ends  to  lessen  their  opposition  to  the 
force  of  the  current  at  flood  and  ebb  tide.  The  logs  are  placed  at  short  dis- 
tances from  each  other,  the  chain  carried  over  them,  and  made  fast  to  each 
by  staples.  There  are  also  a  number  of  anchors  dropped  at  proper  distan- 
ces, with  cables  made  fast  to  the  chain,  to  give  it  greater  stability." 

Mr.  Lossing  describes  a  visit  which  he  made  in  October, 
1848,  to  West  Point,  where  he  saw  a  portion  of  the  famous 
chain.  He  says  :  "  There  are  twelve  links,  two  clevises,  and 
a  portion  of  a  link  of  the  great  chain  remaining.  The 
links  are  made  of  iron  bars,  two  and  a  half  inches  square, 
average  in  length  a  little  over  two  feet,  and  weigh  about  one 
hundred  pounds  each."  The  British  vessels  did  not  pass  West 
Point.  The  manufacture  of  this  chain  was  a  great  achieve- 
ment. The  Sterling  forges,  at  which  the  chain  was  made,  are 
no  longer  in  operation,  but  the  Sterling  works  as  a  whole  are 
now  the  oldest  active  iron  works  in  New  York.  Two  other 
iron  chains  were  stretched  across  the  Hudson  during  the  war 
to  obstruct  its  passage.  One  of  these  was  at  the  mouth  of 
Murderer's  creek,  the  iron  for  which  was  made  at  the  forge  of 
Jonas  Williams.  The  other  chain  was  at  Fort  Montgomery. 
This  chain  was  broken  by  the  British  in  1777. 

The  following  description  of  the  Sterling  works,  which 
were  the  most  extensive  in  New  York  until  after  the  begin- 
ning of  the  present  century,  is  translated  from  a  book  pub- 
lished at  Paris  in  1801,  and  lately  discovered  in  that  city 
by  Mr.  O.  H.  Marshall,  of  Buffalo,  New  York,  a  gentleman  of 
antiquarian  tastes.  It  was  written  by  the  Marquis  de  Creve- 
Cceur,  who  was  in  the  French  service  in  the  French  and  In- 
dian war,  and  afterwards  traveled  extensively  in  this  country. 

Hardly  had  we  put  our  horses  in  the  stable  than  Mr.  Townsend,  the 
proprietor,  came  to  meet  us  with  the  politeness  of  a  man  of  the  world. 
Having  learned  that  the  object  of  our  journey  was  to  examine  attentively 
his  different  works,  he  offered  to  show  us  all  the  details,  and  at  once  led  us 
to  his  large  furnace  where  the  ore  was  melted  and  converted  into  pigs  of  60 
to  100  pounds'  weight.  The  blast  was  supplied  by  two  immense  wooden 
blowers,  neither  iron  nor  leather  being  used  in  their  construction.  This  fur- 
nace, he  said,  produced  from  2,000  to  2,400  tons  annually,  three-fourths  of 
which  are  converted  into  bars,  the  rest  melted  into  cannon  and  cannon 
balls,  &c.  From  there  we  went  to  see  the  forge.  Six  large  hammers  were 
occupied  in  forging  bar  iron  and  anchors  and  various  pieces  used  on  vessels. 

Lower  down  the  stream  (which  afforded  power  to  the  works")  was  the 
foundry,  with  its  reverberatory  furnace  (air  furnace).  Here  he  called  our 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  141 

attention  to  several  ingenious  machines  destined  for  different  uses.     The 
models  had  been  sent  him,  and  the  machines  he  had  cast  from  iron  of  a  re- 
cently discovered  ore,  which  after  two  fusions  acquired  great  fineness.    With 
it  he  could  do  the  lightest  and  most  delicate  work.    "  What  a  pity,"  he  said, 
"that  you  did  not  come  ten  days  sooner.    I  would  have  shown  you,  first, 
three  new  styles  of  plows,  of  which  I  have  cast  the  largest  pieces,  and 
which,  however,  are  no  heavier  than  the  oM-fashioned.    Each  one  of  them 
is  provided  with  a  kind  of  steel  yard,  so  graduated  that  one  can  tell  the 
power  of  the  team  and  the  resistance  of  the  soil.     Second,  I  would  have  \ 
shown  you  a  portable  mill  for  separating  the  grain  from  the  chaff,  folio  wed  •  j 
by  another  machine  by  which  all  the  ears  in  the  field  can  be  easily  gather-    ' 
ed  without  being  obliged  to  cut  the  stalk  at  the  foot,  according  to  the  old 
method." 

From  the  foundry  we  went  to  see  the  furnaces  where  the  iron  is  con- 
verted into  steel.  "It  is  not  yet  as  good  as  the  Swedes,"  said  Mr.  T.,  "but 
we  approach  it — a  few  years  more  of  experience  and  we  will  arrive  at  per- 
fection. The  iron  which  comes  from  under  my  hammers  has  had  for  a  long  « 
time  a  high  reputation  and  sells  for  £28  to  £30  per  ton."  After  having  pass- 
ed two  days  in  examining  these  divers  works  and  admiring  the  skill  with 
which  they  were  supplied  with  water,  as  well  as  the  arrangements  for 
furnishing  the  charcoal  for  the  different  furnaces,  we  parted  from  Mr. 
Townsend. 

Peter  Townseiid,  an  iron  merchant,  died  on  September  27, 
1885,  at  his  residence  in  East  Twenty-third  street,  New  York 
city.  He  was  born  at  Chester,  in  Orange  county,  New  York, 
in  1803,  and  was  the  third  Peter  Townsend  in  direct  descent 
who  has  been  identified  with  the  iron  industry  of  the  State 
of  New  York.  He  was  the  grandson  of  the  pioneer  iron  man- 
ufacturer referred  to  in  this  chapter,  who  died  in  1783. 

As  early  as  1765  there  were  iron  works  in  Dutchess  coun- 
ty, some  of  which  were  either  then  or  at  a  later  day  supplied 
with  iron  ore  from  the  Salisbury  mines  in  Connecticut.  The 
Maltby  mine,  at  Millerton,  was  opened  in  1750.  A  furnace 
and  foundry  at  Amenia  in  this  county  were  in  operation  dur- 
ing the  Revolution,  "  at  which  steel  and  castings  were  made 
for  the  use  of  the  army."  James  F.  Lewis,  of  Amenia,  says 
that  the  Amenia  mine  was  opened  about  1760,  and  that  the 
ore  was  used  during  the  Revolution  for  making  guns,  "  being 
worked  in  a  forge  at  what  is  now  known  as  the  'old  steel 
works.'  " 

In  the  manor  of  Philipsburg,  in  Westchester  county,  iron 
ore  was  mined  and  furnaces  were  erected  before  the  close  of 
the  last  century.  About  the  time  of  the  Revolution  a  fur- 
nace named  Haverstraw  and  several  bloomaries  were  in  exist- 


142  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

ence  in  Rockland  county,  on  the  western  side  of  the  Tappan 
Zee.  Iron  ore  was  mined  in  Putnam  county  in  the  latter  part 
of  the  last  century,  some  of  which  was  taken  to  iron  works  on 
Long  Island  sound.  A  bloom ary  was  in  operation  about  the 
period  of  the  Revolution  at  Patchogue,  in  Brookhaven  town- 
ship, Suffolk  county,  Long  Island.  At  Riverhead,  in  Suffolk 
county,  Captain  Solomon  Townsend  established  "  a  manufac- 

ttory  of  bar  iron"  before  the  close  of  the  last  century. 

About  the  year  1800  the  celebrated  Champlain  iron  dis- 
trict was  developed.  In  1801  probably  the  first  iron  works 
in  the  district  were  built  at  Willsborough  Falls,  on  the  Bo- 
quet  river,  in  Essex  county,  to  manufacture  anchors.  George 
Throop,  Levi  Highly,  and  Charles  Kane  were  the  proprietors. 
Among  other  early  iron  enterprises  in  this  district  were  the 
New  Russia,  Jay,  and  Elba  forges  in  Essex  county,  and  the 
Eagle  rolling  mill  at  Keeseville  in  Clinton  county.  This  dis- 
trict has  been  for  a  long  time  the  most  important  iron  dis- 
trict in  the  State,  containing  rolling  mills,  blast  furnaces,  and 
forges,  but  it  is  not  so  prominent  now  as  it  was  formerly. 
The  Champlain  forges  are  all  true  bloomaries,  manufacturing 
blooms  directly  from  the  rich  magnetic  and  specular  ores  of 
the  neighborhood.  The  district  comprises  the  counties  of 
Essex,  Clinton,  and  Franklin.  A  forge  was  built  at  West  Fort 
Ann,  in  Washington  county,  south  of  Lake  George,  about 
1802,  which  used  ore  of  precisely  the  same  character  as  that 
obtained  in  the  Champlain  district. 

It  has  already  been  stated  that  the  Catalan  forge,  for  the 
manufacture  of  iron  directly  from  the  ore,  is  still  in  use  in  the 
United  States.  In  some  of  the  Southern  States  it  is  used  in 
the  simple  and  inexpensive  form  in  which  it  appears  to  have 
been  introduced  into  this  country,  and  which  among  metal- 
lurgists is  known  as  the  German  bloomary.  But  in  the  Cham- 
plain  district  of  New  York  the  old  Catalan  forge,  or  German 
bloomary,  has  been  greatly  improved,  so  much  so  that  the 
bloomary  in  use  in  this  district,  with  its  expensive  machinery 
and  uniform  product,  may  be  styled  the  American  bloomary. 
It  is  fully  described  by  Professor  Thomas  Egleston  in  a  paper 
in  the  Transactions  of  the  American  Institute  of  Mining  En- 
gineers, volume  VIII.  The  blast  is  heated,  which  was  never 

\  done  with  the  old  Catalan  forge,  but  most  of  the  power  is  still 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  143 

supplied  by  a  water-wheel.  Charcoal  is  the  only  fuel  used, 
and  great  care  is  taken  in  its  manufacture,  as  well  as  in  cal- 
cining the  ore,  which  is  of  a  very  pure  quality.  The  bloom 
produced  in  this  forge  usually  weighs  from  300  to  400  pounds. 
From  the  blooms  are  obtained  billets  of  refined  iron,  which 
are  used  in  the  manufacture  of  crucible  and  open-hearth  steel, 
plate  and  sheet  iron,  etc.  About  one  ton  of  billets  is  pro- 
duced at  each  forge  in  twenty-four  hours.  The  blooms  and' 
billets  are  hammered  into  shape  by  a  trip-hammer. 

In  1883  there  were  in  the  Champlain  district  no  fewer 
than  27  large  forges,  or  bloomaries,  for  the  manufacture  of 
blooms.  They  embraced  171  forge  fires.  In  the  census  year 
1880  there  were  only  22  forges,  with  141  fires,  and  they  pro- 
duced 31,580  net  tons  of  blooms  in  that  year.  The  production 
of  Champlain  blooms  increased  from  23,666  net  tons  in  1875 
to  43,911  tons  in  the  calendar  year  1882.  In  1890  the  num- 
ber of  forges  had  been  reduced  to  14,  with  102  fires,  and  their 
production  in  1889  was  only  12,397  net  tons  of  blooms. 

The  Champlain  district  is  a  large  producer  of  iron  ore, 
much  of  which  is  annually  shipped  to  other  districts  in  New 
York  and  to  other  States.  In  1889  the  total  quantity  of  iron 
ore  shipped  from  the  mines  of  this  district,  chiefly  from  Es- 
sex and  Clinton  counties,  aggregated  642,092  gross  tons. 

West  of  the  Champlain  district,  in  the  counties  of  Saint 
Lawrence,  Jefferson,  Lewis,  Oswego,  and  Oneida,  many  char- 
coal furnaces  were  built  'about  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century,  among  the  earliest  of  which  were  Rossie  furnace  in 
Saint  Lawrence  county,  Taberg  furnace  in  Oneida  county,  and 
Constantia  furnace  in  Oswego  county.  In  the  extreme  west- 
ern and  southwestern  parts  of  the  State  the  few  iron  and 
steel  enterprises  that  have  had  an  existence  during  the  pres- 
ent century  have  all  been  of  yet  more  modern  origin. 

Nails  were  extensively  manufactured  by  hand  at  Albany  • 
in  1787.  Twenty  years  later,  in  1807,  John  Brinkerhoff,  of. 
Albany,  lighted  the  fires  in  his  newly-erected  rolling  mill  on 
the  Wynantskill.  The  Troy  Daily  Times  says  that  "  the  oper- 
ations of  the  little  wooden  rolling  mill  built  by  him  were  con- 
fined to  converting  Russian  and  Swedish  bar  iron  into  plates, 
which  were  slit  into  narrow  strips,  and  these  cut  to  the  re- 
quired length  and  made  into  nails  by  hand." -jn^ 1826  the 


144  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

nail  factory  of  John  Brinkerhoff  was  sold  at  auction  and  pur- 
chased for  $5,280  by  Erastus  Corning,  who  was  then  engaged 
at  Albany  in  the  hardware  business.  It  now  forms  part  of 
the  works  of  the  Troy  Steel  and  Iron  Company,  the  most  ex- 
tensive and  important  iron  and  steel  works  in  the  State,  em- 
bracing a  large  rolling  mill  and  large  blast  furnaces  and  a 
large  Bessemer  steel  plant  at  Troy. 

Between  1790  and  1800  there  are  said  to  have  been  twen- 
ty-three patents  granted  in  the  United  States  for  nail-making 
machinery,  and  down  to  1825  the  whole  number  granted  is 
said  to  have  been  one  hundred  and  twenty.  Among  these 
patents  was  one  issued  to  Josiah  G.  Pierson,  of  New  York,  on 
the  23d  of  March,  1795,  and  the  machine  covered  by  this  pat- 
ent is  said  to  have  been  the  first  nail-cutting  machine  that 
produced  satisfactory  results  and  was  generally  used.  The  in- 
ventor was  at  the  time  a  member  of  the  firm  of  J.  G.  Pierson 
&  Brothers,  which  in  the  same  year  established  works  at  the 
village  of  Ramapo,  in  Rockland  county,  New  York,  for  the 
manufacture  of  iron  and  nails,  and  which  had  previously,  in 
1787  or  1788,  been  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  cut  nails, 
with  an  imperfect  machine,  in  Whitehall  street,  in  the  city  of 
New  York.  While  the  works  were  in  New  York  the  strips 
for  the  nails  were  rolled  and  slit  at  a  mill  near  Wilming- 
ton, in  Delaware,  to  which  Swedish  and  Russian  iron  was 
sent,  no  other  mill  being  available  at  the  time.  This  incon- 
venience was  avoided  after  the  establishment  of  the  works 
at  Ramapo,  which  included  a  rolling  and  slitting  mill.  The 
manufacture  of  nails  by  Mr.  Pierson's  machine  was  here  act- 
ively prosecuted  until  about  1830,  when  the  same  firm,  which 
had  been  making  blister  steel  at  Hoboken  for  twenty  years, 
removed  its  steel  furnaces  to  Ramapo,  and  substituted  the 
manufacture  of  spring  steel  for  that  of  nails.  The  works  of 
the  Messrs.  Pierson  at  Ramapo  have  been  succeeded  by  those 
of  the  celebrated  Ramapo  Wheel  and  Foundry  Company. 

In  Hunt's  Merchants'  Magazine  for  1844  horseshoes  made 
by  machinery  were  cited  as  an  illustration  of  the  achieve- 
ments of  American  inventive  genius  down  to  that  time.  We 
quote  from  the  Magazine  as  follows  :  "  Horseshoes  furnish  a 
similar  proof  of  the  bearing  of  the  progress  of  inventions. 
An  improved  kind  of  horseshoes,  made  at  Troy,  New  York, 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  145 

for  some  time  past,  is  now  sold  at  the  price  of  only  five  cents 
per  pound,  ready  prepared,  to  be  used  in  shoeing  the  animal. 
At  a  factory  recently  erected  fifty  tons  of  these  are  now  turn- 
ed out  per  day;  and,  it  is  believed,  they  can  be  made  and 
sent  to  Europe  at  as  good  a  profit  as  is  derived  from  Ameri- 
can clocks,  which  have  handsomely  remunerated  the  export- 
er." These  horseshoes  were  made  at  the  Burden  iron  works, 
formerly  the  Troy  iron  and  nail  factory,  which  are  still  em- 
ployed in  their  production. 

It  is  not  generally  known  that  machine-made  horseshoes 
were  produced  at  so  early  a  day  in  this  country  as  1844.  The 
machine-made  horseshoe  was  patented  by  Henry  Burden  in 
1835.  Other  horseshoe  patents  were  issued  to  him  in  1843, 
1857,  and  1862.  Mr.  Burden  was  also  the  inventor  of  the 
hook-headed  spike  and  of  the  Burden  rotary  squeezer — the 
latter  in  1840.  He  was  born  at  Dumb  lane,  Scotland,  on  April 
20,  1791,  and  died  at  Troy  on  January  19,  1871. 

The  iron  industry  of  New  York  was  not  so  prominent  dur- 
ing the  eighteenth  century  as  that  of  some  other  States,  but 
soon  after  the  beginning  of  the  present  century  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Champlain  district  gave  to  it  more  prominence, 
which  was  still  further  increased  after  1840,  when  anthracite 
coal  was  applied  to  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron.  In  1870, 
and  again  in  1880,  New  York  ranked  third  in  the  list  of  iron 
and  steel  producing  States,  Pennsylvania  being  first  in  the  ag- 
gregate tonnage  of  iron  and  steel  and  Ohio  second  in  the  list 
in  both  years.  But  in  1890  New  York  was  fifth  among  the 
States  in  the  production  of  pig  iron,  Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  Ala- 
bama, and  Illinois  ranking  above  her  in  the  order  mentioned. 
In  the  production  of  steel  of  all  kinds  she  was  also  the  fifth 
in  the  list,  being  preceded  by  Pennsylvania,  Illinois,  Ohio, 
and  West  Virginia. 


146  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
EARLY  IRON  ENTERPRISES  IN  NEW  JERSEY. 

IN  Mr.  William  Reed  Deane's  Genealogical  Memoirs  of  the 
Leonard  Family,  already  noticed,  it  is  said  that  Henry  Leon- 
ard left  Rowley  village,  Massachusetts,  early  in  1674,  "  and  at 
that  time,  or  soon  after,  went  to  New  Jersey,  establishing  the 
iron  manufacture  in  that  State."  His  sons  Samuel,  Nathan- 
iel, and  Thomas  probably  left  Rowley  village  soon  after  their 
father's  departure  and  followed  him  to  New  Jersey.  Bishop 
says  that  Shrewsbury,  a  township  lying  northwest  of  Long 
Branch,  in  Monmouth  county,  was  settled  by  Connecticut 
people  soon  after  New  Jersey  was  surrendered  to  the  English 
by  the  Dutch  in  1664,  and  that  it  was  "to  this  part  of  Jer- 
sey" that  Henry  Leonard  removed.  About  the  time  of  the 
Connecticut  settlement  James  Grover,  who  had  resided  on 
Long  Island,  also  settled  in  Shrewsbury,  and  is  said  to  have 
established  iron  works  in  that  township,  which  he  afterwards 
sold  to  Colonel  Lewis  Morris,  then  a  merchant  of  Barbadoes, 
but  born  in  England.  On  October  26,  1676,  a  grant  of  land 
was  made  to  Colonel  Morris,  with  full  liberty  to  him  and  his 
heirs  "to  dig,  delve,  and  carry  away  all  such  mines  for  iron  as 
they  shall  find  or  see  fit  to  dig  and  carry  away  to  the  iron 
work,"  which  grant  establishes  the  fact  that  the  iron  works  in 
Shrewsbury  were  built  prior  to  1676,  and  that  they  were  then 
owned  by  Colonel  Morris.  They  were  probably  undertaken 
about  1674,  the  year  in  which  Henry  Leonard  is  said  to  have 
emigrated  from  Massachusetts  to  New  Jersey.  They  were  the 
first  iron  works  in  New  Jersey. 

In  an  account  of  the  province  of  East  Jersey,  published 
by  the  proprietors  in  1682,  it  is  stated  that  "  there  is  already 
a  smelting  furnace  and  forge  set  up  in  this  colony,  where  is 
made  good  iron,  which  is  of  great  benefit  to  the  country."  In 
his  History  of  New  Jersey  Smith  says  that  in  1682  "  Shrews- 
bury, near  Sandy  Hook,  adjoining  the  river  or  creek  of  that 
name,  was  already  a  township,  consisting  of  several  thousand 
acres,  with  large  plantations  contiguous ;  the  inhabitants  were 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  147 

computed  to  be  about  400.  Lewis  Morris,  of  Barbadoes,  had 
iron  works  and  other  considerable  improvements  here."  In 
1685  it  was  stated  in  The  Model  of  the  Government  of  East  New 
Jersey  that  "  there  is  an  iron  work  already  set  up,  where  there 
is  good  iron  made."  In  the  same  year  Thomas  Budd,  in  his 
Good  Order  in  Pennsylvania  and  Neiv  Jersey,  wrote  that  there 
was  but  one  iron  work  in  New  Jersey,  and  that  this  was  lo- 
cated in  Monmouth  county.  All  of  these  statements  refer  to 
the  Shrewsbury  works,  which  do  not  seem  to  have  had  a  long 
life.  According  to  Oldmixon  they  were  located  between  the 
towns  of  Shrewsbury  and  Middletown,  but  other  writers  more 
definitely  locate  them  at  Tinton  Falls.  The  original  name 
was  probably  Tintern  Falls,  so  called  after  Tintern  Abbey  in 
Monmouthshire.  Bog  ore  was  used.  Many  years  ago  a  fur- 
nace named  Bergen  was  built  in  Monmouth  county,  which 
has  long  been  abandoned. 

The  rich  deposits  of  magnetic  iron  ore  in  Northern  New 
Jersey  were  discovered  at  an  early  day,  and  about  1710,  as  we 
are  informed  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Joseph  F.  Tuttle,  in  his  Early 
History  of  Morris  County,  written  in  1869,  settlements  were 
made  on  the  Whippany  river,  in  Hanover  township,  in  Mor- 
ris county,  and  at  a  place  now  called  Whippany,  four  miles 
northeast  of  Morristown,  a  forge  was  erected,  but  by  whom  is 
not  now  known.  Bishop  says  that  the  first  settlers  of  Hano- 
ver located  there  "for  the  purpose  of  smelting  the  iron  ores 
in  the  neighborhood."  They  "  early  erected  several  forges 
and  engaged  extensively  in  the  iron  manufacture."  Whip- 
paiiy  is  about  fifteen  miles  east  of  the  celebrated  Succasunna 
iron-ore  mine,  in.  the  present  township  of  Randolph,  and  it 
was  here  that  the  settlers  obtained  their  supply  of  iron  ore. 
It  was  carried  to  the  works  in  leather  bags  on  pack-horses, 
and  the  bar  iron  was  carried  on  horseback  over  the  Orange 
mountains  to  Newark.  Bishop  mentions  that  "  forges  at  Mor- 
ristown, and  some  in  Essex  county,  were  long  supplied  in  the 
same  way  from  the  rich  ore  of  the  mine.  The  ore  was  for 
some  time  free  to  all."  This  celebrated  iron-ore  deposit  has 
long  been  known  as  the  "  Dickerson  mine,"  so  called  after  the 
Hon.  Mahlon  Dickerson,  who  was  Governor  of  New  Jersey  in 
the  early  part  of  this  century,  and  was  subsequently  and  for 
many  years  a  United  States  Senator  from  the  same  State. 


148  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Hon.  Edmund  D.  Halsey,  in  the  History  of  Morris  County, 
says  that  "  the  tract  embracing  the  Dickerson  mine  was  tak- 
en up  on  account  of  its  minerals  "  by  John  Reading  in  1713 
or  1714,  who  sold  it  to  Joseph  Kirkbride  in  1716. 

Dr.  Tuttle  says  that  in  1722  Joseph  Latham  sold  a  tract  of 
land  in  the  present  township  of  Randolph,  in  Morris  county, 
to  "  one  John  Jackson,  who  built  a  forge  on  the  little  stream 
which  puts  into  the  Rockaway  near  the  residence  of  Mr.  Jacob 
Hurd.  The  forge  was  nearly  in  front  of  Mr.  Hurd's  house," 
a  mile  west  of  Dover.  Wood  for  charcoal  was  abundant,  and 
the  mine  on  the  hill  was  not  far  distant.  For  some  reason 
Jackson  did  not  succeed  in  his  iron  enterprise,  and  was  sold 
out  by  the  sheriff  in  1753.  After  his  failure  he  is  supposed 
to  have  removed  to  the  western  part  of  Virginia.  "  Jackson's 
iron  works  on  Cheat  river,"  in  that  State,  mentioned  by  early 
writers,  may  have  been  established  by  him  or  his  sons.  Dr. 
Tuttle  says  that  Rockaway  was  settled  about  1725,  or  possibly 
as  late  as  1730,  "  at  which  time  a  small  iron  forge  was  built 
near  where  the  upper  forge  now  stands  in  Rockaway."  This 
was  the  first  forge  at  Rockaway.  Mr.  Halsey  says  that  it  was 
probably  built  by  Job  Allen  ;  it  was  known  as  "  Job  Allen's 
iron  works  "  in  1748.  Dr.  Tuttle  adds  that  "  forges  were  built 
on  different  streams,  at  Rockaway,  Denmark,  Middle  Forge, 
Ninkee,  Shaungum,  Franklin,  and  other  places,  from  the  year 
1725  to  1770."  At  Troy,  in  Morris  county,  as  we  learn  from 
another  source,  a  forge  was  built  in  1743,  which  was  in  oper- 
ation as  late  as  1860.  In  1737,  as  we  are  informed  by  Will- 
iam Nelson,  of  Pater  son,  there  is  a  reference  to  "the  Busseton 
forge  by  Ringwood  cold  spring "  in  Passaic  county.  All  these 
forges  were  bloomaries,  manufacturing  bar  iron  directly  from 
the  ore.  In  1751  many  of  them  did  not  individually  produce 
more  than  five  or  six  tons  of  iron  in  a  year. 

At  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  and  for  some  years 
after  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  New  Jersey  was 
the  only  colony  outside  of  New  England  that  was  engaged  in 
the  manufacture  of  iron,  and  this  manufacture  was  almost 
wholly  confined  to  its  bloomaries.  The  rich  magnetic  ores, 
the  well- wooded  hillsides,  and  the  restless  mountain  streams 
of  Northern  New  Jersey  afforded  every  facility  for  the  man- 
ufacture of  iron  of  a  superior  quality  by  this  simple  meth- 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  149 

od,  while  the  nearness  of  good  markets  furnished  a  sufficient 
'inducement  to  engage  in  the  business.  The  bloomaries  of 
New  Jersey  were  Catalan  forges  of  the  German  type.  Many 
of  them  were  blown  by  the  trompe,  or  water-blast. 

Not  much  progress  was  made,  however,  in  the  establish- 
ment of  the  iron  industry  in  New  Jersey  until  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  From  about  1740  down  to  the  Revo- 
lution many  blast  furnaces  and  other  iron  works  were  built. 
The  iron  industry  of  New  Jersey  during  the  greater  part  of 
this  period  was  exceedingly  active,  although  hampered  by 
restrictions  imposed  by  the  mother  country.  To  the  iron 
enterprises  which  were  then  built  up  within  its  borders  the 
patriotic  cause  was  afterwards  greatly  indebted  for  much  of 
the  iron  and  steel  that  was  needed  to  secure  its  success. 

Peter  Hasenclever,  a  Prussian  gentleman  of  prominence, 
who  is  usually  referred  to  as  Baron  Hasenclever,  emigrated 
to  New  Jersey  about  1764  as  the  head  of  an  iron  company 
which  he  had  organized  in  London,  and  brought  with  him  a 
large  number  of  German  miners  and  ironworkers.  His  ca- 
reer in  this  country  is  very  fully  described  by  Dr.  Tuttle  in 
his  history  and  by  Mr.  Halsey  in  a  letter  which  we  have 
received  from  him.  Dr.  Tuttle  first  gives  an  account  of  the 
Ringwood  Company,  which  was  organized  in  1740  and  was 
principally  composed  of  several  persons  named  Ogden,  from 
Newark.  In  that  year  the  company  purchased  from  Cornelius 
Board  sixteen  acres  of  land  at  Ringwood,  near  Greenwood 
lake,  in  Bergen  (now  Passaic)  county,  where  they  built  a  fur- 
nace, afterwards  buying  from  Board  other  property.  In  1764 
Joseph  Board  conveyed  to  the  Ringwood  Company  a  tract  of 
land  at  Ringwood  "  near  the  old  forge  and  dwelling  house 
of  Walter  Erwin."  On  July  5,  1764,  the  Ringwood  Company 
sold  to  "  Peter  Hasenclever,  late  of  London,  merchant,"  for 
£5,000,  all  of  its  lands  and  its  improvements  at  Ringwood. 
The  deed  states  that  on  the  property  there  are  "  erected  and 
standing  a  furnace,  two  forges,  and  several  dwelling  houses." 
It  speaks  of  "Timothy  Ward's  forge;"  also  of  the  "old  forge 
at  Ringwood."  In  1764  Hasenclever  also  bought  from  vari- 
ous persons  other  tracts  of  land  at  Ringwood  and  in  its  vi- 
cinity, and  in  1765  he  bought  several  tracts  from  Lord  Stir- 
ling. These  purchases  were  located  at  Ringwood,  Pompton, 


150  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Long  Pond,  and  Charlottenburg,  all  in  what  was  then  Bergen 
county.  Hasenclever  probably  also  purchased  an  interest  in 
the  iron-ore  mines  at  Hibernia.  Dr.  Tuttle  says  that  "  Has- 
enclever at  once  began  to  enlarge  the  old  works  and  build 
others  at  each  of  the  places  just  named,"  that  is,  Bingwood, 
Pompton,  Long  Pond,  and  Charlottenburg.  It  is  probable 
that  he  built  a  furnace  and  one  or  more  forges  at  each  place ; 
three  furnaces  and  six  forges  he  certainly  built.  The  fur- 
naces were  erected,  respectively,  as  follows :  Charlottenburg, 
on  the  west  branch  of  the  Pequannock ;  Kingwood,  on  the 
Ringwood  branch  of  the  Pequannock ;  and  Long  Pond,  on 
the  Winockie,  about  two  miles  from  Greenwood  lake.  Char- 
lottenburg was  built  in  1767,  and  was  capable  of  producing 
from  20  to  25  tons  of  pig  iron  weekly.  Long  Pond  was  in 
blast  in  1768.  Hon.  Abram  S.  Hewitt  writes  us  that  at  Ring- 
wood  he  has  a  pig  of  iron  with  "  Ringwood  1770  "  marked 
on  it  by  the  founder,  and  Mr.  William  Nelson,  of  Paterson, 
writes  us  that  he  has  seen  at  Charlottenburg  a  small  pig  of 
iron  upon  which  was  cast  in  raised  letters  "  Charlottenburg 
1770." 

Hasenclever  certainly  succeeded  in  making  good  iron, 
some  of  which  wras  shipped  to  England.  He  also  made  steel 
of  good  quality  "  directly  from  the  ore."  In  1768  he  became 
financially  embarrassed,  and  in  1770  was  formally  declared  a 
bankrupt.  He  returned  to  Germany  and  became  a  success- 
ful linen  manufacturer  in  Silesia.  He  was  succeeded  in  the 
management  of  the  company's  estate  by  John  Jacob  Faesch, 
who  had  come  to  New  Jersey  with  him,  or  soon  after  him, 
under  an  engagement  as  manager  of  the  iron  works  for  seven 
years.  Faesch  is  said  to  have  looked  after  his  own  interests 
more  than  those  of  the  company.  In  1771  or  1772  he  was 
succeeded  by  Robert  Erskine,  a  Scotchman,  who  appears  to 
have  met  with  success  until  1776,  when  all  the  works  were 
stopped  by  the  opening  of  hostilities  and  Charlottenburg  fur- 
nace was  burned,  but  whether  accidentally  or  by  the  oppo- 
nents of  the  patriotic  cause  is  not  now  known. 

Robert  Erskine  was  thoroughly  loyal  to  the  Revolution- 
ary cause.  He  died  at  Ringwood  in  1780,  "  and  his  grave 
occupies  a  retired  spot  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  the 
ruins  of  the  old  Ringwood  furnace,  near  the  road  leading 


IKON    IN   ALL    AGES.  151 

from  Ringwood  to  West  Milford."  The  inscription  upon  his 
tombstone  reads :  "  In  memory  of  Robert  Erskine,  F.  R.  S. ; 
geographer  and  surveyor  general  to  the  army  of  the  United 
States ;  son  of  Rev.  Ralph  Erskine,  late  minister  at  Dumf er- 
line,  in  Scotland.  Born  September  7, 1735.  Died  October  2, 
1780,  aged  45  years  and  25  days."  For  some  time  he  held 
a  commission  as  captain  in  the  New  Jersey  militia.  New 
Jersey  may  well  honor  the  memory  of  this  early  ironmaster. 
The  Adventure  furnace  at  Hibernia  in  Morris  county  was 
a  famous  furnace  during  the  Revolution,  casting  ordnance 
and  other  supplies  for  the  army.  It  was  built  in  1765.  Mr. 
Halsey  says  that  a  tract  of  land  was  located  on  November  23, 
1765,  "about  three-quarters  of  a  mile  above  the  new  furnace 
called  the  Adventure."  The  name  usually  given  to  this  fur- 
nace is  Hibernia.  Dr.  Tuttle  says  that  "  the  names  of  Lord 
Stirling,  Benjamin  Cooper,  and  Samuel  Ford  are  connected 
with  the  original  building  and  ownership  of  the  Hibernia 
works."  He  also  says  that  "  Benjamin  Cooper  &  Co."  held 
"•pew  No.  6  "  in  the  old  Rockaway  meeting-house  in  1768.  A 
grant  of  certain  privileges  to  encourage  the  enterprise  was 
made  by  the  legislature  in  1769.  In  1765  Ford  sold  his  in- 
terest in  the  furnace  to  Anderson  and  Cooper,  after  which  sale 
he  was  actively  engaged  for  a  number  of  years  in  the  busi- 
ness of  counterfeiting  "Jersey  bills  of  credit,"  which  he  after- 
wards pleasantly  referred  to  as  "a  piece  of  engenuity."  In 
1768  he  participated  in  the  robbery  of  the  treasury  of  the 
province  at  Amboy,  his  former  partner,  Cooper,  being  one 
of  his  associates.  Ford  was  arrested  in  1773,  but  escaped  to 
Virginia ;  Cooper  and  others  were  also  arrested  and  convicted, 
but  all  except  one  escaped  punishment,  and  he  was  hanged. 
Previous  to  the  time  of  his  arrest,  in  1773,  Cooper  appears  to 
have  sold  his  interest  in  Hibernia  furnace  to  Lord  Stirling, 
who  became  its  sole  owner  about  this  time,  Mr.  Halsey  thinks 
in  1771. 

Mount  Hope  furnace,  about  four  miles  northwest  of  Rock- 
away,  was  built  in  1772  by  John  Jacob  Faesch,  after  he  had 
severed  his  connection  with  the  London  Company.  It  was 
active  until  about  1825.  It  also  was  a  noted  furnace  during 
the  Revolution,  casting  shot  and  shells  and  cannon  for  the 
Continental  army.  In  September,  1776,  Joseph  Hoff,  who  was 


152  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

then  the  manager  of  Hibernia  furnace,  wrote  to  Lord  Stir- 
ling that  Faesch  had  requested  him  "  to  inform  you  that  he 
wanted  200  tons  of  pig  metal,  and  wanted  to  know  your  price 
and  terms  of  payment.  Iron  will  undoubtedly  be  in  great 
demand,  as  few  works  on  the  continent  are  doing  anything 
this  season."  This  letter  indicates  that  at  the  time  it  was 
written  Faesch  owned  or  controlled  a  forge  for  converting  pig 
iron  into  bar  iron.  Mr.  Halsey  says  that  he  became  the  own- 
er of  Middle  and.  Rockaway  forges  and  the  lessee  of  Mount 
Pleasant  forge  and  the  Boonton  slitting  mill.  On  the  14th 
of  November,  1776,  Hoff  wrote  to  General  Knox  that  there 
were  35  tons  of  shot  at  Hibernia  furnace,  and  on  the  21st  of 
November  he  wrote  that  it  was  the  only  furnace  in  New  Jer- 
sey which  he  knew  to  be  then  in  blast.  The  Hibernia  and 
the  Mount  Hope  furnaces  were  both  in  blast  in  1777.  Mr. 
Halsey  informs  us  that  among  the  laws  of  New  Jersey  for 
1777  is  an  act,  passed  October  7th,  exempting  from  military 
service  men  to  be  employed  at  Mount  Hope  and  Hibernia 
furnaces,  and  reciting  the  necessity  of  providing  the  army  and 
navy  of  the  United  States* with  cannon,  cannon  shot,  etc.,  and 
that  the  works  "have  been  for  some  time  past  employed"  in 
providing  such  articles,  and  "  are  now  under  contract  for  a 
large  quantity."  Faesch  is  said  by  Dr.  Tuttle  to  have  become 
the  lessee  of  Hibernia  furnace  at  some  time  during  the  war. 
He  says  "  this  must  have  been  subsequent  to  July  10,  1778, 
at  which  date  I  find  a  letter  to  Lord  Stirling  from  Charles 
Hoff,,  his  manager  at  Hibernia,  reporting  to  him  what  he 
was  doing." 

Faesch  died  at  Old  Boonton  on  May  29,  1799, -and  was 
buried  at  Morristown.  Mr.  Halsey  says  that  he  was  born  in 
the  canton  of  Basle  in  Switzerland  in  1729.  Dr.  Tuttle  says 
that  "  in  his  day  John  Jacob  Faesch  was  one  of  the  great  men 
of  Morris  county,  regarded  as  its  greatest  ironmaster,  one  of 
its  richest  men,  and  one  of  its  most  loyal  citizens."  General 
Washington  and  his  staff  once  visited  him  at  Mount  Hope. 

Lord  Stirling,  whose  proper  name  was  William  Alexan- 
der, was  born  in  the  city  of  New  York  in  1726  and  died  at 
Albany  in  1783.  As  has  been  shown  in  the  chapter  relating 
to  New  York,  his  name  has  been  given  to  one  of  the  oldest 
and  most  successful  iron  enterprises  in  the  country.  His 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  153 

wife  was  a  daughter  of  Philip  Livingston,  and  a  sister  of 
Philip  Livingston  the  signer  of  the  Declaration. 

Colonel  Jacob  Ford,  Sr.,  was  a  large  landholder  in  Morris 
county  about  the  middle  of  the  last  century.  In  1750  he 
built  two  forges,  probably  a  finery  and  chafery,  at  Mount 
Pleasant,  three  miles  west  of  Rockaway.  There  was  a  forge 
at  this  place  in  1856,  but  in  ruins.  In  1764  John  Harrirnan 
owned  a  forge  called  Burnt  Meadow  forge,  at  Denmark,  about 
five  miles  north  of  Rockaway,  of  which  Colonel  Jacob  Ford, 
Jr.,  afterwards  became  the  owner.  It  was  probably  built  by 
Colonel  Jacob  Ford,  Sr.,  in  1750.  About  1764  Colonel  Ford, 
Jr.,  became  the  owner  of  the  forge  above  Mount  Pleasant  and 
below  Denmark,  called  ever  since  Middle  forge,  which  was 
built  by  Jonathan  Osborn  in  1749.  The  United  States  now 
owns  the  site  of  the  forge  last  mentioned.  John  Johnston 
had  "  iron  works  "  at  Horse  Pound,  now  Beach  Glen,  a  mile 
and  a  half  below  Hibernia,  from  1753  to  1765,  as  appears 
from  references  in  the  title  papers  of  adjoining  lands. 

In  Andover  township,  in  Sussex  county,  a  furnace  and  a 
forge  were  built  by  a  strong  company  before  the  Revolution, 
probably  about  1760,  and  the  works  were  operated  on  an  ex- 
tensive scale.  About  the  beginning  of  hostilities  the  works 
were  closed,  the  company  being  principally  composed  of  roy- 
alists. The  excellent  quality  of  the  iron  made  from  the  ore 
of  the  Andover  mine  led,  however,  to  such  legislation  by 
Congress  in  January,  1778,  as  resulted  in  putting  them  in 
operation.  Whitehead  Humphreys,  of  Philadelphia,  was 
directed  by  Congress  to  make  steel  for  the  use  of  the  army 
from  Andover  iron,  as  the  iron  made  at  the  Andover  works 
was 'the  only  iron  which  would  "with  certainty  answer  the 
purpose  of  making  steel."  This  action  of  Congress  is  given 
in  detail  by  the  Hon.  Jacob  W.  Miller,  in  an  address  before 
the  New  Jersey  Historical  Society  in  1854,  who  also  records 
the  interesting  fact  that  William  Penn  was  an  early  owner 
of  the  Andover  mine.  He  says  that  "on  the  10th  of  March, 
1714,  by  a  warrant  from  the  council  of  proprietors,  he  ac- 
quired title  to  a  large  tract  of  land  situated  among  the  moun- 
tains then  of  Hunterton,  now  of  Sussex,  county,  and  William 
Penn  became  the  owner  of  one  of  the  richest  mines  of  iron 
ore  in  New  Jersey.  This  mine,  since  called  Andover,  was 


154  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

opened  and  worked  to  a  considerable  extent  as  early  as  1760. 
Tradition  reveals  to  us  that  the  products  of  these  works  were 
carried  upon  pack-horses  and  carts  down  the  valley  of  the 
Musconetcong  to  a  place  on  the  Delaware  called  Durham,  and 
were  thence  transported  to  Philadelphia  in  boats,  which  were 
remarkable  for  their  beauty  and  model,  and  are  known  as 
Durham  boats  to  this  day." 

Franklin  furnace,  near  Hamburg,  in  Sussex  county,  which 
was  built  in  1770  and  abandoned  about  1860,  has  been  suc- 
ceeded by  one  of  the  largest  furnaces  in  the  country.  There 
were  several  forges  at  and  near  Hamburg  in  the  last  century. 

Israel  Acrelius,  the  historian  of  New  Sweden,  who  resided 
in  this  country  from  1750  to  1756,  mentions  five  iron  enter- 
prises as  then  existing  in  New  Jersey — the  Union  iron  works, 
and  Oxford,  Sterling,  Ogden's,  and  Mount  Holly  furnaces. 

Oxford  furnace,  at  Oxford,  in  Warren  county,  on  a  branch 
of  the  Pequest  river,  was  built  by  Jonathan  Robeson  in  1742. 
Tradition  says  that  it  was  first  blown  by  a  water-blast.  Can- 
non balls  were  cast  at  this  furnace  in  the  French  war  of  1755 
/and  for  the  Continental  army.  The  furnace  was  in  opera- 
tion in  1880,  using  anthracite  coal,  but  in  1882  it  went  out  of 
blast  and  is  now  abandoned.  We  are  informed  by  Mr.  Ed- 
mund T.  Lukens,  secretary  and  general  manager  of  the  Ox- 
ford Iron  and  Nail  Company,  that  "the  original  masonry, 
built  in  1742,  is  still  standing,  encased  in  strengthening  walls, 
which  were  added  from  time  to  time  as  the  binding  timbers 
of  the  old  work  burned  or  rotted  off.  The  old  stack  was 
built  in  6-foot  rises,  (after  the  first  rise  of  12  feet  for  work- 
ing arch,)  with  18  inches  for  each  set-off,  and  these  rises  were 
bound  with  heavy  timbers,  keyed  together  at  the  corners." 
Through  the  courtesy  of  Mr.  Lukens  we  now  have  in  our 
possession  a  set  of  eight  fine  photographs,  seven  of  which 
show  from  different  points  of  view  the  stack  and  connected 
buildings  of  the  famous  old  blast  furnace  of  his  company, 
while  the  eighth  photograph  represents  the  furnace  mansion- 
house,  in  which  Hon.  George  M.  Robesqn,  ex-Secretary  of  the 
Navy,  a  descendant  of  Jonathan  Robeson,  was  born.  In  1880 
Oxford  furnace  divided  with  Cornwall  furnace  in  Pennsylva- 
nia the  honor  of  being  the  oldest  furnace  in  the  United  States 
that  was  then  in  operation. 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  155 

The  Sterling  furnace  referred  to  was  Sterling  furnace  in 
New  York,  but  this  furnace,  some  particulars  of  which  have 
already  been  given,  was  then  probably  embraced  within  the 
boundaries  of  New  Jersey.  Ogden's  furnace  was  probably  the 
Ringwood  furnace  built  by  the  Ogdens  about  1740,  as  stated 
on  a  preceding  page.  After  the  sale  of  that  furnace  to  the 
London  Company  the  Ogdens  probably  built  a  furnace  about 
1765  at  Bloomingdale,  in  Passaic  county.  Mr.  Halsey  writes 
us  that  there  was  an  old  stack  in  good  preservation  at  Bloom- 
ingdale (near  Butler)  in  1800,  which  was  known  as  "  Ogden's 
furnace."  Mount  Holly  furnace  was  situated  at  the  town  of 
that  name,  in  Burlington  county.  We  are  informed  by  Mr. 
Austin  N.  Hungerford  that  it  was  built  in  1730  by  Isaac  Pier- 
son,  Mahlon  Stacy,  and  John  Burr.  A  forge  was  connected 
with  the  furnace.  The  works  stood  where  the  saw-mill  at  the 
south  end  of  Pine  street,  on  Rancocas  creek,  now  stands.  In 
1775  sheet  iron  was  manufactured  by  Thomas  Mayberry  at 
the  forge  at  Mount  Holly,  some  of  which  was  used  to  make 
camp-kettles  for  the  Continental  army,  and  in  1776  shot  and 
shells  were  made  at  the  furnace.  The  British  being  informed 
that  munitions  of  war  were  being  made  at  the  furnace  they 
destroyed  the  works,  which  were  not  rebuilt. 

The  Union  iron  works  were  situated  near  Clinton,  in  Hun- 
terton  county,  and  embraced  at  the  time  of  Acrelius's  visit 
two  furnaces  and  two  forges,  "  each  with  two  stacks ; "  also 
a  trip-hammer  and  a  "flatting-hammer."  These  works  were 
then  owned  by  William  Allen  and  Joseph  Turner,  both  of 
Philadelphia.  William  Allen  was  the  chief  justice  of  Penn- 
sylvania from  1751  to  1774.  Allentown,  in  Pennsylvania,  was 
named  after  him.  He  was  largely  interested  in  the  manufac- 
ture of  iron  in  Pennsylvania  and  New  Jersey,  and  with  him 
was  usually  associated  Joseph  Turner.  In  October,  1775, 
Allen  gave  his  "half  of  a  quantity  of  cannon  shot  belong- 
ing to  him  and  to  Turner  for  the  use  of  the  Board  of  the 
Council  of  Safety;"  but  he  remained  loyal  to  the  British 
crown,  nevertheless,  dying  in  London  in  1780.  The  Union 
iron  works  appear  to  have  been  entirely  abandoned  in  1778. 
Judge  Allen  informed  Acrelius  that  at  these  works,  and  also 
at  Durham,  a  Pennsylvania  furnace,  one  and  a  half  tons  of 
iron  ore  yielded  one  ton  of  pig  iron,  and  that  a  good  fur- 


156  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

nace  yielded  from  twenty  to  twenty-five  tons  of  pig  iron 
every  week. 

Mr.  Charles  P.  Keith's  Provincial  Councillors  of  Pennsylva- 
nia gives  us  the  following  details :  "  For  about  fifty  years 
Turner  was  in  partnership  with  William  Allen  in  commercial 
business,  the  house  of  Allen  &  Turner  [in  Philadelphia]  for  a 
long  time  prior  to  the  Revolutionary  war  being  the  most  im- 
portant in  the  colony.  They  also  engaged  in  the  manufacture 
of  iron,  and  owned  several  mines  in  Pennsylvania  and  New 
Jersey.  The  Union  iron  works,  in  Hunterton  county,  New 
Jersey,  were  the  most  celebrated,  the  property  at  the  date  of 
Turner's  will  amounting  to  11,000  acres."  He  died  in  1783. 

Except  Mount  Holly  all  of  the  furnaces  named  used  mag- 
netic ore;  Mount  Holly,  according  to  Acrelius,  used  "brittle 
bog  ore  in  gravel,"  which  was  "  only  serviceable  for  castings." 
But  the  existence  of  the  forge  and  the  further  fact  that  pig 
iron  has  been  found  in  the  ruins  of  the  works  show  that  the 
ore  was  used  for  something  else  than  castings.  Acrelius 
mentions,  but  does  not  name,  four  bloomaries  in  New  Jersey, 
all  "  in  full  blast "  during  his  visit.  His  list  of  iron  enter- 
prises in  New  Jersey  in  his  day  is  incomplete. 

Several  blast  furnaces  were  built  in  the  southern  and 
southwestern  parts  of  New  Jersey  at  an  early  day  to  use  the 
bog  ore  of  that  section.  Of  these  the  furnace  at  Mount  Holly, 
already  mentioned,  was  doubtless  the  oldest.  Batsto  furnace, 
also  in  Burlington  county,  was  built  about  1766  by  Charles 
Read,  who  held  many  offices  under  the  provincial  government. 
It  cast  shot  and  shells  for  the  Continental  army.  There  was 
a  forge  connected  with  this  furnace  as  early  as  1786,  when 
Batsto  bars  brought  £30  per  ton  at  New  York  in  New  York 
currency.  A  neighboring  furnace,  Atsion,  was  also  built  about 
1766.  A  few  bloomaries  were  also  built  in  this  section  in-  the 
last  century,  to  work  bog  ore.  The  "Jersey  pines"  furnished 
the  fuel  for  the  furnaces  and  bloomaries,  and  oyster  shells 
supplied  the  fluxing  material  for  the  furnaces.  It  was  stated 
in  the  chapter  relating  to  New  England  iron  enterprises  in 
the  last  century  that  ore  was  taken  from  Egg.  Harbor,  in 
New  Jersey,  to  supply  some  Massachusetts  furnaces.  This  was 
bog  ore.  Batsto  furnace  was  situated  on  a  branch  of  Little 
Egg  Harbor  river,  and  ran  until  1846,  when  it  was  abandoned. 


IROX   IN   ALL   AGES.  157 

Mrs.  Augustus  H.  Richards,  of  Philaderphia,  has  in  her  pos- 
session an  iron  plate  cast  at  Batsto  furnace,  bearing  the  date 
1766,  which  doubtless  fixes  the  exact  date  of  its  erection. 

Of  the  early  iron  works  in  Southern  and  Southwestern 
New  Jersey  additional  to  the  Mount  Holly,  Batsto,  and  Atsion 
enterprises,  which  have  been  specifically  named,  mention  may 
be  made  of  a  few  of  the  most  prominent,  nearly  all  built  near 
the  close  of  the  last  century  or  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century.  Mr.  Austin  N.  Hungerford,  an  expert  in  the  prep- 
aration of  various  local  histories  relating  to  Pennsylvania  and 
New  Jersey,  furnishes  us  with  the  following  information. 

In  1722  the  erection  of  a  bloomary  forge  was  undertaken  by  Isaac  Hor- 
ner,  Daniel  Farns worth,  and  Joseph  Borden  on  the  west  side  of  Black's 
creek,  which  rises  near  Georgetown,  in  Burlington  county,  and  runs  a  north- 
easterly course  between  Mansfield  and  Chesterfield  townships  and  empties 
into  the  Delaware  at  Bordentown.  On  February  1,  1725,  the  partly -erected 
forge  with  the  property  connected  with  it  was  conveyed  by  the  three  pro- 
prietors to  Thomas  Potts,  a  son-in-law  of  Joseph  Borden.  On  the  same  day 
he  conveyed  one  undivided  half  of  the  property  to  Colonel  Daniel  Coxe,  (of 
whom  mention  is  made  that  he  had  been  interested  in  the  manufacture  of 
iron  for  several  years,)  and  one-fourth  to  John  Allen,  retaining  one-fourth 
interest  for  himself.  The  forge  was  completed  in  the  summer  of  1725,  and 
was  probably  operated  for  a  few  years,  but  no  account  of  it  has  been  ob- 
tained. The  property  afterwards  passed  into  the  possession  of  a  Mr.  Lewis, 
of  Philadelphia.  Thomas  Potts  had  emigrated  to  this  country  in  the  ship 
Shields,  which  brought  so  many  emigrants  to  West  Jersey. 

The  most  noted  ironmaster  in  West  Jersey  prior  to  the  Eevolution  was 
the  Hon.  Charles  Read.  In  the  year  1766  he  built  Batsto  furnace  on  Batsto 
creek,  a  branch  of  Little  Egg  Harbor  river,  about  six  miles  northeast  from 
the  present  village  of  Elwood,  on  the  Camden  and  Atlantic  Railroad.  An 
act  of  the  legislature,  passed  June  20, 1765,  enabled  him  to  erect  a  dam  across 
Batsto  creek,  and  the  same  act  enabled  John  Estell  to  erect  a  dam  across 
Atsion  river,  at  Atsion,  where  Charles  Read  soon  afterwards  erected  Atsion 
furnace.  Taunton  furnace,  erected  by  Mr.  Read,  was  built  in  1766  in  Eves- 
ham  township,  on  Rancocas  creek.  It  was  conducted  by  him  until  the 
assignment  of  his  property  on  June  2, 1773.  All  these  enterprises  were  in 
Burlington  county. 

About  1800  Hampton  furnace  and  forge  were  erected  on  the  Batsto 
branch  of  the  Mullica  river,  about  three  and  a  half  miles  from  Atsion. 
They  became  permanently  idle  abou*1840.  Speedwell  furnace,  situated  on 
the  north  branch  of  Wading  river,  in  Burlington  county,  was  erected  be- 
fore the  Revolution,  but  by  whom  is  not  ascertained.  Gloucester  furnace, 
situated  on  the  south  side  of  Little  Egg  Harbor  river,  in  Mullica  township, 
Atlantic  county,  was  erected  about  the  beginning  of  the  present  century. 
It  was  operated  until  about  1850,  when  it  was  abandoned.  Martha  furnace 
was  situated  on  the  Oswego  branch  of  Wading  river,  about  four  miles  from 


158  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

the  head  of  navigation.  It  was  built  by  one  of  the  Potts  family,  of  Potts- 
town,  Pennsylvania,  and  blown  in  in  1793.  In  1834  it  produced  750  tons  of 
castings.  Wey mouth  furnace  and  forge  were  situated  on  Great  Egg  Harbor 
river,  about  six  miles  from  May's  Landing.  They  were  erected  in  1802  by 
Charles  Shoemaker,  George  Ashbridge,  Morris  Robinson,  John  Paul,  and 
Joseph  M.  Paul.  The  fires  of  the  furnace  have  long  since  gone  out.  In  1834 
the  product  of  the  furnace  was  900  tons  of  castings,  and  of  the  forge,  with 
its  four  fires  and  two  hammers,  200  tons  of  bar  iron.  Monroe  forge,  near 
Weymouth  furnace,  was  situated  on  South  river,  about  three  miles  south- 
west from  May's  Landing.  It  was  owned  in  1820  by  Lewis  M.  Walker  and 
was  abandoned  about  1835.  Cumberland  furnace  was  situated  at  the  head  of 
the  Manamuskin,  in  Cumberland  county.  The  property  on  which  it  was  lo- 
cated was  purchased  by  Eli  Budd  in  1785,  and  he  afterwards  put  up  a  forge 
for  manufacturing  iron  and  operated  it  for  several  years.  In  1810  his  son, 
Wesley  Budd,  erected  a  blast  furnace.  The  furnace  was  operated  until  1840, 
when  it  was  abandoned,  its  last  owner  being  Edward  Smith,  of  Philadelphia. 

Mr.  Benjamin  Snyder,  of  Lakewood,  Ocean  county,  gives 
us  the  following  additional  information  concerning  several  of 
the  southern  and  southwestern  iron  enterprises  in  New  Jersey. 

Etna  furnace  was  situated  on  a  tributary  of  the  south  branch  of  the 
Rancocas  creek,  two  and  a  half  miles  from  Medford,  and  about  four  miles 
from  Taunton,  in  Burlington  county.  It  was  built  by  Charles  Read  before 
the  Revolution.  Samuel  G.  Wright  for  many  years  owned  Federal  furnace, 
first  known  as  Dover  furnace,  where  now  stands  the  village  of  Manchester, 
on  the  New  Jersey  Southern  Railway,  eight  miles  from  Lakewood.  In  1814 
Jesse  Richards  purchased  the  water  power  of  the  Three  Partners  saw  mill 
and  erected  the  Washington  furnace.  The  place  has  since  been  known  by 
various  titles,  and  is  now  called  Lakewood.  The  enterprise  was  a  failure, 
and  after  two  years  the  furnace  was  abandoned.  The  stack,  one  of  the 
best  of  its  kind,  was  left  standing,  and  in  1832  Joseph  W.  Brick  came  here 
from  Burlington  county,  purchased  the  property,  and  put  the  furnace  in 
blast  in  1833.  It  continued  in  operation  until  the  close  of  1854,  being  the 
last  of  the  South  Jersey  iron  furnaces  to  "go  out  as  a  finality."  The  Mon- 
mouth  furnace,  afterwards  called  Howell  works,  eight  miles  east  of  Lake- 
wood,  was  built  by  William  Griffith,  of  Burlington,  was  afterwards  owned 
by  Shippen  &  McMurtrie,  of  Philadelphia,  and  subsequently  by  James  P. 
Allaire,  of  New  York  city.  It  was  continued  as  a  furnace  with  intervals 
of  rest  until  about  the  year  1846.  There  was  a  furnace  at  Millville,  in  Cum- 
berland county,  and  a  furnace  called  Hanover,  in  Burlington  county,  both 
the  furnaces  going  out  of  blast  about  1850.  There  was  also  a  forge,  known 
as  Mary  Ann  forge,  two  or  three  miles  below  Hanover  furnace. 

Mr.  Snyder  mentions  Etna  furnace  as  having  been  built 
by  Charles  Read,  but  it  is  not  mentioned  by  Mr.  Hungerford. 
Tuckahoe  furnace,  on  Tuckahoe  river,  in  Cape  May  county, 
was  built  in  the  last  century  and  has  long  been  abandoned. 
It  appears  to  have  been  sometimes  called  New  Etna,  There 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  159 

was  certainly  an  Etna  furnace  on  Tuckahoe  river  many  years 
ago,  probably  in  the  last  century. 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  southern  and  southwestern  parts 
of  New  Jersey  produced  iron  at  one  time  in  large  quantities 
from  bog  ores.  Iron  is  not  now  produced  from  these  ores  in 
New  Jersey  in  any  form,  nor  is  there  a  blast  furnace  in  ei- 
ther the  southern  or  southwestern  parts  of  the  Sta"te. 

The  Batsto  iron  works  were  well  managed.  On  July  1, 
1784,  they  passed  into  the  hands  of  William  Richards,  who 
owned  and  operated  them  until  1809,  when  he  was  succeeded 
in  their  ownership  and  management  by  his  son  Jesse,  who 
operated  them  until  their  final  suspension  in  1846.  Another 
son,  Samuel,  was  also  prominently  identified  with  the  manu- 
facture of  iron  in  Southern  New  Jersey  in  the  first  half  of 
the  present  century,  as  was  also  Mark  Richards,  who  was  not, 
however,  a  relative  of  the  other  persons  of  the  same  name 
who  have  been  mentioned.  Mark  Richards  was  of  Wurtem- 
burger  ancestry,  the  name  being  a  corruption  of  Reichert,  as 
we  are  informed  by  Louis  Richards,  Esq.,  of  Reading,  Penn- 
sylvania ;  whereas  the  family  of  William  Richards  was  of 
Welsh  origin. 

Mark  Richards  was  born  in  Montgomery  county,  Pennsyl- 
vania. William  Richards  was  born  in  Berks  county,  Pennsyl- 
vania, on  September  12,  1738,  and  died  at  Mount  Holly,  New 
Jersey,  on  August  31,  1823.  In  early  life  he  was  employed 
at  Coventry  forge  and  Warwick  furnace,  in  Chester  county, 
Pennsylvania,  and  about  1768  he  was  employed  at  Batsto 
as  founder.  He  was  a  •  soldier  during  the  Revolution.  In 
January,  1781,  he  became  the  manager  of  Batsto  iron  works. 
Mr.  Richards  was  onw  of  the  great  men  among  the  pioneers 
of  the  American  iron  industry. 

On  November  10,  1750,  Governor  Belcher  certified  that  \ 
there  were  in  New  Jersey  "  one  mill  or  engine  for  slitting 
and  rolling  of  iron,  situate  in  the  township  of  Bethlehem,  in 
the  county  of  Hunterton,  on  the  south  branch  of  the  river 
Raritan,  the  property  of  Messrs.  William  Allen  and  Joseph 
Turner,  of  Philadelphia,  which  is  not  now  in  use ;  one  plat- 
ing-forge, which  works  with  a  tilt-hammer,  situate  on  a  small 
brook  at  the  west  end  of  Trenton,  the  property  of  Benjamin 
Yard,  of  Hunterton,  which  is  now  used ;  one  furnace  for  the 


160  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

making  of  steel,  situate  in  Trenton,  the  property  of  Benjamin 
Yard,  which  is  not  now  used."  Steel  was,  however,  made  at 
Trenton  during  the  Revolution.  A  rolling  and  slitting  mill 
was  built  at  Old  Boonton,  in  Morris  county,  before  the  Revo- 
lution, probably  about  1770,  by  a  member  of  the  Ogden  fam- 
ily. A  more  successful  enterprise  of  the  same  kind  was  es- 
tablished'at  Dover,  in  the  same  county,  about  1792,  by  Israel 
Canfield  and  Jacob  Losey,  who  also  added  a  factory  for  cut- 
ting nails,  which  were  headed  by  hand  in  dies.  In  1800 
there  were  in  this  county  three  rolling  and  slitting  mills,  two 
furnaces,  "  and  about  forty  forges  with  two  to  four  fires  each." 

Mr.  Halsey  furnishes  us  with  the  following  episode  in  the 
history  of  the  Old  Boonton  slitting  mill:  "A  slitting  mill 
was  erected  at  Old  Boonton,  on  the  Rockaway  river,  about 
a  mile  below  the  present  town  of  Boonton,  in  defiance  of 
the  law,  by  Samuel  Ogden,  of  Newark,  with  the  aid  of  his 
father.  The  entrance  was  from  the  hillside,  and  in  the  upper 
room  first  entered  there  were  stones  for  grinding  grain,  'the 
slitting  mill  being  below  and  out  of  sight.  It  is  said  that 
Governor  William  Franklin  visited  the  place  suddenly,  hav- 
ing heard  a  rumor  of  its  existence,  but  was  so  hospitably  en- 
tertained by  Mr.  Ogden,  and  the  iron  works  were  so  effectually 
concealed,  that  the  Governor  came  away  saying  he  was  glad 
to  find  that  it  was  a  groundless  report,  as  he  had  always  sup- 
posed." 

A  nail  factory  was  in  full  operation  at  Burlington  in  1797. 
In  1814  or  1815  Benjamin  and  David  Reeves,  brothers,  estab- 
lished the  Cumberland  nail  and  iron  works  at  Bridgeton,  in 
Cumberland  county,  and  for  many  years  successfully  manu- 
factured nails,  with  which  they  largely  supplied  the  eastern 
markets.  These  works  are  still  in  operation.  In  1812  a  roll- 
ing and  slitting  mill  was  built  at  Paterson  by  Nicholas  Dela- 
plaine,  Samuel  Colt,  and  John  Colt,  which  Mr.  Nelson  in- 
forms us  made  shovels  and  spades,  also  camp  utensils,  frying 
pans,  etc.,  for  the  use  of  the  army.  In  1814  the  manufacture 
of  nails  was  commenced.  At  first  the  nails  were  headed  by 
hand,  but  subsequently  they  were  cut  and  headed  by  one 
operation.  In  1820  the  works  were  leased  by  Colonel  Joseph 
Jackson,  of  Rockaway,  and  his  brother  William,  and  they 
rolled  round  and  square  iron.  It  is  important  to  note  the 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  161 

year  in  which  the  Jackson  brothers  rolled  this  iron,  as  the 
rolling  of  iron,  except  in  connection  with  slitting  mills,  had 
but  recently  been  introduced  into  this  country.  In  1822  they 
built  the  first  rolling  mill  at  Rockaway. 

Peter  Cooper  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  at  Tren- 
ton, New  Jersey,  in  1845,  where,  as  is  stated  by  the  American 
Cydopcedia,  "  he  erected  the  largest  rolling  mill  at  that  time 
in  the  United  States  for  the  manufacture  of  railroad  iron,  and 
at  which  subsequently  he  was  the  first  to  roll  wrought-iron 
beams  for  fire-proof  buildings."  He  had  previously,  however, 
been  prominently  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  at  Bal- 
timore and  in  New  York  city.  In  connection  with  members 
of  his  family  he  also  embarked  in  many  other  important 
iron  enterprises  in  New  Jersey.  His  name  has  been  the  most 
prominent  and  the  most  honored  in  the  iron  history  of  the 
State  during  the  present  century.  He  was  born  in  New  York 
city  on  February  12,  1791,  and  died  at  the  residence  of  his 
son-in-law,  Hon.  Abram  S.  Hewitt,  in  the  same  city,  on  April 
4,  1883,  aged  92  years,  1  month,  and  23  days. 

A  letter  which  we  have  received  from  Mr.  Frederick  J. 
Slade,  treasurer  of  the  New  Jersey  Steel  and  Iron  Company, 
at  Trenton,  gives  us  the  following  information.  "  The  first 
rolled  beams  made  at  these  works  were  rolled  in  the  spring 
of  1854.  These  were  7  inches  deep,  weighed  about  81  pounds 
per  yard,  and  were  of  the  form  known  as  deck  beams.  They 
were  used  in  Harper  Brothers'  and  the  Cooper  Union  build- 
ings, New  York,  and  also  on  the  Camden  and  Amboy  Rail- 
road as  rails.  They  were  rolled  on  a  mill  having  three  verti- 
cal rolls,  as  if  a  three-high  train  were  turned  on  end,  which 
were  patented  by  William  Burrows.  'I'  beams  were  after- 
wards rolled  in  the  same  mill,  which  was,  however,  after  a 
few  years  replaced  by  a  three-high  train  having  horizontal 
rolls,  as  in  the  present  usual  construction.  The  name  of  the 
works  at  that  time  was  the  Trenton  iron  works,  owned  by 
the  Trenton  Iron  Company." 

In  1784  New  Jersey  had  eight  furnaces  and  seventy-nine 
forges  and  bloomaries,  but  principally  bloomaries. 

In  Jedidiah  Morse's  geography,  printed  in  1795,  there  is 
the  following  record  of  iron  enterprises  which  were  in  exist- 
ence in  New  Jersey  a  year  or  two  earlier. 


162  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

The  iron  manufactories  are,  of  all  others,  the  greatest  source  of 
wealth  to  the  State.  Iron  works  are  erected  in  Gloucester,  Burlington, 
Morris,  and  other  counties.  The  mountains  in  the  county  of  Morris  give 
rise  to  a  number  of  streams  necessary  and  convenient  for  these  works, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  furnish  a  copious  supply  of  wood  and  ore  of  a 
superior  quality.  In  this  county  alone  are  no  less  than  seven  rich  iron 
mines,  from  which  might  be  taken  ore  sufficient  to  supply  the  United 
States;  and,  to  work  it  into  iron,  are  two  furnaces,  two  rolling  and  slit- 
ting mills,  and  about  thirty  forges,  containing  from  two  to  four  fires  each. 
These  works  produce  annually  about  540  tons  of  bar  iron,  800  tons  of 
pigs,  besides  large  quantities  of  hollow  ware,  sheet  iron,  and  nail  rods. 
In  the  whole  State  it  is  supposed  there  is  yearly  made  about  1,200  tons 
of  bar  iron,  1,200  ditto  of  pigs,  80  ditto  of  nail  rods,  exclusive  of  hollow 
ware  and  various  other  castings,  of  which  vast  quantities  are  made.  Steel 
was  manufactured  at  Trenton  in  time  of  the  war,  but  not  considerably 
since. 

In  1802  there  were  in  New  Jersey,  according  to  a  memo- 
rial to  Congress  adopted  in  that  year,  150  forges,  "  which, 
at  a  moderate  calculation,  would  produce  twenty  tons  of  bar 
iron  each  annually,  amounting  to  3,000  tons."  At  the  same 
time  there  were  in  the  State  seven  blast  furnaces  in  operation 
and  six  that  were  out  of  blast;  also  four  rolling  and  slitting 
mills,  "  which  rolled  and  slit  on  an  average  200  tons,  one-half 
of  which  were  manufactured  into  nails."  Of  the  forges  men- 
tioned about  120  were  in  Morris,  Sussex,  and  Bergen  counties. 

Of  the  numerous  charcoal  furnaces  which  once  dotted  New 
Jersey  not  one  now  remains  which  uses  charcoal,  the  intro- 
duction of  anthracite  coal  in  the  smelting  of  iron  ore,  which 
took  place  about  1840,  rendering  the  further  production  of 
charcoal  pig/ iron  in  New  Jersey  unprofitable.  The  last  char- 
coal furnace  erected  in  the  State  was  built  at  Split  Rock,  in 
Morris  county,  by  the  late  Andrew  B.  Cobb,  about  1862,  but 
it  was  soon  abandoned.  Not  one  of  the  old  bloomaries  of 
New  Jersey  now  remains.  There  were  in  the  State  in  1890, 
however,  several  forges  for  the  manufacture  of  blooms  from 
pig  and  scrap  iron,  and  also  a  large  number  of  rolling  mills, 
steel  works,  wire  works,  pipe  works,  and  anthracite  furnaces. 

In  1870  New  Jersey  was  fourth  in  rank  among  the  iron- 
producing  States  in  the  aggregate  production  of  iron  and 
steel,  but  in  1880  it  had  fallen  to  the  fifth  place.  In  1890  it 
was  tenth  in  the  production  of  pig  iron  and  seventh  in  the 
production  of  steel. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  163 


CHAPTER    XIV. 

BEGINNING  OF  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF   IRON   IN 
PENNSYLVANIA. 

THE  settlers  on  the  Delaware,  under  the  successive  admin- 
istrations of  the  Swedes  and  Dutch  and  the  Duke  of  York 
down  to  1682,  appear  to  have  made  no  effort  to  manufacture 
iron  in  any  form.  In  the  Journal  of  a  Voyage  to  New  York 
in  1679  and  1680  by  Jasper  Dankers  and  Peter  Sluyter,  who 
then  visited  the  Swedish  and  other  settlements  on  the  Dela- 
ware, it  is  expressly  stated  that  iron  ore  had  not  been  seen  by 
them  on  Tinicum  Island  or  elsewhere  in  the  neighborhood. 
Jasper  Dankers  says  :  "  As  to  there  being  a  mine  of  iron  ore 
upon  it,  I  have  not  seen  any  upon  that  island,  or  elsewhere ; 
and  if  it  were  so  it  is  of  no  great  importance,  for  such  mines 
are  so  common  in  this  country  that  little  account  is  made  of 
them." 

Under  the  more  active  rule  of  William  Penn,  who  sailed 
up  the  Delaware  in  the  ship  Welcome  in  1682,  the  manufac- 
ture of  iron  in  Pennsylvania  had  its  beginning.  In  a  letter 
written  by  Penn  to  Lord  Keeper  North  in  July,  1683,  he  men- 
tions the  existence  of  "  mineral  of  copper  and  iron  in  divers 
places  "  in  Pennsylvania.  In  his  Further  Account  of  the  Prov- 
ince of  Pennsylvania,  written  in  1685,  speaking  of  "  things  that 
we  have  in  prospect  for  staples  of  trade,"  he  says  :  "  I  might 
add  iron,  (perhaps  copper,  too,)  for  there  is  much  mine,  and 
it  will  be  granted  us  that  we  want  no  wood."  In  a  letter  to 
James  Logan,  the  secretary  of  the  province,  dated  London, 
April  21, 1702,  he  says,  under  the  heading  of  "  Iron  Works  :  " 
"  Call  on  those  people  for  an  answer  to  the  heads  I  gave 
them  from  Ambrose  Crawley.  Divers  would  engage  here  in 
it  as  soon  as  they  receive  an  account,  which  in  a  time  of  war 
would  serve  the  country.  Things  as  to  America  will  come 
under  another  regulation  after  a  while."  To  this  letter  Logan 
replied  from  Philadelphia,  under  date  of  October  1, 1702,  as 
follows  :  "  I  have  spoke  to  the  chief  of  those  concerned  in  the 
iron  mines,  but  they  seem  careless,  having  never  had  a  meet- 


164  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

ing  since  thy  departure;  their  answer  is  that  they  have  not 
yet  found  any  considerable  vein."  Smiles,  in  his  Industrial 
Biography,  says:  "William  Penn,  the  courtier  Quaker,  ha^ 
iron  furnaces  at  Hawkhurst  and  other  places  in  Sussex." 
It  was,  therefore,  but  natural  that  he  should  encourage  the 
manufacture  of  iron  in  his  province,  and  it  was  certainly 
through  no  indifference  or  neglect  of  his  that  this  industry 
was  not  established  at  an  early  day.  We  have  referred  in 
the  preceding  chapter  to  his  ownership  in  1714  of  the  cele- 
brated Andover  iron-ore  mine  in  New  Jersey. 

In  1692  we  find  the  first  mention  of  iron  having  been 
made  in  Pennsylvania.  It  is  contained  in  a  metrical  compo- 
sition entitled  A  Short  Description  of  Pennsylvania,  by  Richard 
Frame,  which  was  printed  and  sold  by  William  Bradford,  in 
Philadelphia,  in  1692.  Frame  says  that  at  "a  certain  place 
about  some  forty  pound  "  of  iron  had  then  been  made.  The 
entire  reference  is  as  follows : 

A  certain  place  here  is,  where  some  begun 
To  try  some  Mettle,  and  have  made  it  run, 
Wherein  was  Iron  absolutely  found, 
At  once  was  known  about  some  Forty  Pound. 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  Frame  was  not  more  explicit  in 
describing  the  place  where  this  iron  was  made.  It  was  possi- 
bly made  in  a  bloomary  fire ;  probably  in  a  blacksmith's  fire. 

In  1698  Gabriel  Thomas  printed  at  London  An  Historical 
and  Geographical  Account  of  the  Province  and  Country  of  Penn- 
sylvania and  of  West  New  Jersey  in  America,  in  which  mention 
is  made  of  the  mineral  productions  of  these  colonies.  Allud- 
ing to  Pennsylvania,  he  says :  "  There  is  likewise  ironstone  or 
ore,  lately  found,  which  far  exceeds  that  in  England,  being 
richer  and  less  drossy.  Some  preparations  have  been  made 
to  carry  on  an  iron  work."  But  neither  these  preparations 
nor  the  operations  alluded  to  by  Richard  Frame  appear'  to 
have  led  to  practical  results — certainly  not  to  the  erection  of 
permanent  works. 

Mrs.  James,  in  her  Memorial  of  Thomas  Potts,  Junior,  gives 
an  account  of  the  first  successful  attempt  that  was  made  to 
establish  iron  works  in  Pennsylvania.  This  event,  which  oc- 
curred in  1716,  is  briefly  described  in  one  of  Jonathan  Dick- 
inson's letters,  written  in  1717,  which  we  have  seen  :  "  This 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  165 

last  summer  one  Thomas  Rutter,  a  smith,  who  lives  not  far 
from  Germantown,  hath  removed  further  up  in  the  country, 
and  of  his  own  strength  hath  set  upon  making  iron.  Such  it 
proves  to  be,  as  is  highly  set  by  by  all  the  smiths  here,  who 
say  that  the  best  of  Sweed's  iron  doth  not  exceed  it ;  and  we 
have  accounts  of  others  that  are  going  on  with  iron  works." 
Rutter 's  enterprise  was  a  bloomary  forge,  located  on  Mana- 
tawny  creek,  in  Berks  county,  about  three  miles  above  Potts- 
town.  Mrs.  James  says  that  the  name  of  this  forge  was  Pool 
forge.  There  was  certainly  a  Pool  forge  on  the  Manatawny 
as  early  as  1728,  in  which  year  it  is  mentioned  in  Thomas 
Rutter's  will.  The  name  of  Rutter's  pioneer  enterprise  may, 
however,  have  been  Manatawny.  In  the  Philadelphia  Weekly 
Mercury  for  November  1, 1720,  Thomas  Fare,  a  Welshman,  is 
said  to  have  run  away  from  "  the  forge  at  Manatawny."  Bish- 
op says:  "A  forge  is  mentioned  in  March,  1719-20,  at  Mana- 
tawny, then  in  Philadelphia,  but  now  in  Berks  or  Montgom- 
ery, county.  It  was  attacked  by  the  Indians  in  -1728,  but  they 
were  repulsed  with  great  loss  by  the  workmen." 

Hon.  Samuel  W.  Pennypacker,  of  Philadelphia,  a  gentle- 
man of  antiquarian  tastes,  sends  us  the  following  letter  con- 
cerning Pool  forge. 

I  very  cheerfully  respond  to  your  inquiry  for  information  as  to  the  date 
of  the  erection  and  the  ownership  of  Pool  forge.  In  1725  James  Lewis, 
Francis  Rawle,  George  Mifflin,  and  John  Leacock  presented  a  petition  to 
the  Court  of  Quarter  Sessions  of  Philadelphia  asking  for  a  road,  in  which 
they  say :  "  Whereas,  your  petitioners  having  lately  built  a  new  fforge  on 
Manatawny  creek,  and  wanting  a  road  from  Colebrook  ffurnace  to  the  said 
new  fforge  and  from  thence  to  the  great  road  that  leads  to  Philadelphia,  for 
ye  more  convenient  carrying  on  ye  business  of  ye  said  fforge  and  ffurnace," 
etc.  The  court  thereupon  appointed  a  jury,  of  which  my  forefather,  Henry 
Pannebecker,  was  foreman,  and  consisting  of  himself  and  Barnabas  Rhodes, 
Thomas  Potts,  and  Anthony  Lee,  to  lay  out  the  road.  They  reported  on 
March  2,  1726,  saying:  "Pursuant  to  an  order  of  court  hereunto  annexed, 
we  the  subscribers  have  laid  out  a  road  from  Colebrookdale  ffurnace  to  Pool 
fforge,  and  from  thence  to  the  great  road  leading  to  Philadelphia." 

The  old  document  quoted  in  the  above  letter  refers  to 
Pool  forge  as  "  a  new  forge,"  which  strengthens  the  theory 
that  the  name  of  the  pioneer  forge  was  Manatawny. 

Mrs.  James  says  that  Rutter  was  an  English  Quaker, 
who  was  a  resident  of  Philadelphia  in  1685  and  who  remov- 
ed in  1714  from  Germantown  "  forty  miles  up  the  Schuylkill, 


166  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

in  order  to  work  the  iron  mines  of  the  Manatawny  region." 
She  gives  a  verbatim  copy  of  the  original  patent  of  William 
Penn  to  Thomas  Rutter  for  300  acres  of  land  "on  Mana- 
tawny creek,"  dated  February  12,  1714-15. 

The  following  obituary  notice  in  the  Pennsylvania  Gazette, 
published  at  Philadelphia,  dated  March  5  to  March  13,  1729- 
-30,  ought  to  be  conclusive  proof  of  the  priority  of  Thomas 
Rutter's  enterprise :  "  Philadelphia,  March  13.  On  Sunday 
night  last  died  here  Thomas  Rutter,  Senior,  of  a  short  illness. 
He  was  the  first  that  erected  an  iron  work  in  Pennsylvania" 
In  his  will,  which  we  have  examined,  he  is  styled  a  black- 
smith. Many  of  his  descendants  have  been  prominent  Penn- 
sylvania ironmasters.  Mrs.  James  says  that  Dr.  Benjamin 
Rush,  a  signer  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  was  a 
great-grandson  of  Thomas  Rutter.  We  have  verified  in  the 
Pennsylvania  Gazette  the  obituary  notice  above  quoted. 

The  next  iron  enterprise  in  Pennsylvania  was  Coventry 
forge,  on  French  creek,  in  the  northern  part  of  Chester  county, 
which  was  built  by  Samuel  Nutt,  also  an  English  Quaker. 
Egle's  History  of  Pennsylvania  says  that  Nutt  arrived  in  the 
province  in  1714,  and  that  "  he  took  up  land  on  French  creek 
in  1717,  and  about  that  time  built  a  forge  there.  A  letter 
written  by  him  in  1720  mentions  an  intention  of  erecting 
another  forge  that  fall."  We  have  seen  this  letter.  It  is  dated 
July  2,  1720,  and  is  written  in  Friends'  language.  Nutt  pro- 
posed to  build  the  new  forge  on  French  creek.  Mrs.  James 
states  that  Nutt  purchased  800  acres  of  land  at  Coventry  in 
October,  1718.  This  was  in  addition  to  his  earlier  purchases. 
He  probably  made  iron  at  Coventry  in  that  year.  Bishop 
refers  to  a  letter  written  by  Dickinson  in  July,  1718,  stating 
that  "the  expectations  from  the  iron  works  forty  miles  up 
the  Schuylkill  are  very  great."  In  April,  1719,  Dickinson 
again  wrote :  "  Our  iron  promises  well.  What  hath  been  sent 
over  to  England  hath  been  greatly  approved.  Our  smiths 
work  up  all  they  make,  and  it  is  as  good  as  the  best  Swed- 
ish iron."  Dickinson  probably  referred  to  Nutt's  forge  as  well 
as  to  Rutter's.  The  former,  as  well  as  the  latter,  at  first  made 
bar  iron  directly  from  the  ore. 

Coventry  forge  was  in  operation  in  1756.  In  1770  it  is 
noted  on  William  Scull's  map  of  Pennsylvania.  It  was  in 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  167 

active  operation  after  the  Revolution,  and  in  1849  and  1856 
we  again  find  it  active,  making  blooms  from  pig  iron.  It 
made  its  last  iron  in  1870.  The  foundations  and  other  parts 
of  the  old  forge  may  still  be  seen.  It  is  the  oldest  iron  work 
in  the  State  that  is  not  wholly  gnawed  away  by  the  tooth  of 
time.  It  has  been  owned  by  the  Chrisman  family  for  over 
eighty  years. 

The  next  iron  enterprise  in  Pennsylvania  was  undoubt- 
edly Colebrookdale  furnace,  which  was  built  about  1720  by  a 
company  of  which  Thomas  Rutter  was  the  principal  member. 
It  was  located  on  Ironstone  creek,  in  Colebrookdale  township, 
in  Berks  county,  about  eight  miles  north  of  Pottstown,  three- 
fourths  of  a  mile  west  of  Boyertown,  and  about  two  hundred 
yards  from  the*  Colebrookdale  Railroad.  Plenty  of  cinder 
now  marks  the  exact  site.  A  large  flour  and  saw  mill  stands 
about  one  hundred  feet  distant.  This  furnace  supplied  Pool 
forge  with  pig  iron,  and  in  course  of  time  other  forges,  one  of 
which  was  Pine  forge,  to  be  referred  to  hereafter.  The  Cole- 
brookdale company  appears  to  have  been  composed  of  Thom- 
as Rutter,  James  Lewis,  Anthony  Morris,  and  others,  Rutter 
owning  at  one  time  a  two-thirds'  interest,  as  is  shown  by  his 
will,  on  file  in  the  office  of  the  register  of  wills  in  Philadel- 
phia, which  we  have  examined. 

In  1731,  according  to  Mrs.  James,  Colebrookdale  furnace 
and  Pool  forge  were  both  owned  by  companies.  In  the  list  of 
owners  of  both  establishments  appears  the  name  of  Thomas 
Potts,  the  founder  of  a  family  of  the  same  name  which  has 
ever  since  been  prominent  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  in 
Pennsylvania  and  in  other  States.  He  died  at  Colebrookdale 
in  January,  1752.  He  was  in  his  day  the  most  successful 
iron  manufacturer  in  Pennsylvania.  In  his  will,  dated  1747, 
he  leaves  his  "  two-thirds  of  Colebrookdale  furnace  and  iron 
mines  "  to  his  son  Thomas,  and  his  "  one-third  of  Pine  forge  " 
to  his  son  John.  'He  was  of  either  English  or  Welsh  lineage. 
In  1733  the  furnace  was  torn  down  and  rebuilt  by  the  com- 
pany, Thomas  Potts  being  the  manager.  Mrs.  James  writes 
to  us :  "I  have  a  large  calf -bound  folio  ledger  of  nearly  200 
folios  of  Colebrookdale  furnace,  marked  '  B.'  The  first  date 
is  August,  1728,  but  there  are  several  pages  referring  to  the 
first  ledger,  one  of  them  in  1726.  Mention  is  constantly  made 


168  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

of  sending  '  piggs '  to  Pool  forge,  proving  that  this  forge  was 
then  in  full  blast.  '  A '  would  seem  to  be  a  large  volume  from 
reference  to  the  folios,"  and  therefore  to  have  covered  the  op- 
erations of  a  number  of  years.  Mrs.  James  thinks  that  it  is 
lost.  She  adds  that  on  the  title-page  of  ledger  B  the  name 
of  Thomas  Potts  is  written  in  connection  with  the  year  1728, 
probably  as  the  manager  or  lessee  of  the  furnace.  He  was  a 
resident  of  Manatawny  as  early  as  1725. 

On  Nicholas  Scull's  map  of  Pennsylvania,  published  in 
1759,  Colebrookdale  furnace  is  noted,  and  in  a  list  of  iron 
works  existing  in  Pennsylvania  about  1793,  and  published  by 
Mrs.  James,  it  is  again  mentioned,  although  it  was  not  then 
active.  We  have  not  found  it  mentioned  at  any  later  period. 
A  stove-plate  cast  at  this  furnace  in  1763 » was  exhibited  at 
the  Philadelphia  Exhibition  of  1876.  In  1731  pig  iron  sold 
at  Colebrookdale  furnace  "  in  large  quantities  "  at  £5  10s.  per 
ton,  Pennsylvania  currency,  a  pound  being  equal  to  $2.66f. 
It  would  seem  that  friendly  Indians  were  employed  at  Cole- 
brookdale, as  "  Indian  John"  and  "  Margalitha"  are  found  in 
the  list  of  workmen  about  1728.  The  furnace  was  located  in 
the  heart  of  one  of  the  richest  deposits  of  magnetic  iron  ore 
in  the  United  States.  After  being  long  neglected  this  deposit 
was  mined  a  few  years  ago,  but  it  is  again  neglected. 

Redmond  Conyngham,  quoted  in  Day's  Historical  Collec- 
tions of  Pennsylvania,  printed  in  1843,  says  that  iron  works 
are  supposed  to  have  been  established  in  Lancaster  county  in 
1726  by  a  person  named  Kurtz,  who  is  said  by  another  au- 
thority to  have  been  an  Amish  Mennonite.  In  Egle's  History 
of  Pennsylvania  it  is  stated  that  Kurtz's  wrorks  were  on  Octo- 
rara  creek,  and  that  it  is  possible  they  were  in  Maryland  and 
not  in  Lancaster  county.  Conyngham  also  says  that  the  en- 
terprising family  of  Grubbs  "  commenced  operations  in  1728," 
also  in  Lancaster  county.  Both  history  and  tradition  are  si- 
lent concerning  the  nature  of  these  alleged  "  operations "  at 
that  time.  We  will  refer  to  the  Gr.ubb  family  again. 

Durham  furnace,  on  Durham  creek,  about  one  and  a  half 
miles  above  its  entrance  into  the  Delaware  river  in  the  ex- 
treme northern  part  of  Bucks  county,  was  built  in  1727  by 
a  company  of  fourteen  persons,  of  which  Anthony  Morris, 
William  Allen,  Joseph  Turner,  and  James  Logan  (Penn's  sec- 


IRON    IN    ALL   AGES.  169 

retary)  were  members.  Its  first  blast  took  place  in  the  fall  of 
1727,  and  in  November  of  1728  James  Logan  shipped  three 
tons  of  Durham  pig  iron  to  England.  At  the  Philadelphia 
Exhibition  of  1876  the  keystone  of  Durham  furnace,  bearing 
the  date  1727,  was  an  object  of  interest.  It  is  now  in  the 
office  of  Cooper  &  Hewitt,  at  Durham.  The  furnace  was  be- 
tween 35  and  40  feet  square  and  about  30  feet  high.  From 
the  first  this  furnace  made  pig  iron  to  be  converted  into 
bar  iron,  although  subsequently,  as  early  as  1741,  stoves  were 
cast  at  the  furnace  in  large  quantities.  From  a  very  inter- 
esting pamphlet  account  of  Durham  township  by  Herbert  C. 
Bell,  assisted  by  Charles  Laubach  and  B.  F.  Fackenthal,  Jr., 
printed  in  1887,  we  learn  that  there  were  three  forges  on  Dur- 
ham creek,  all  below  the  furnace,  and  that  many  other  forges 
in  the  neighborhood,  on  both  sides  of  the  Delaware,  were 
supplied  with  pig  iron  from  this  furnace. 

On  Nicholas  Scull's  map  of  Pennsylvania  (1759)  an  old 
and  a  new  furnace  and  a  forge  at  Durham  are  plainly  noted. 
In  1770  two  furnaces  and  two  forges  are  marked  in  Will- 
iam Scull's  map.  But  there  was  probably  only  one  furnace. 
As  late  as  1780  negro  slaves  were  employed  at  Durham,  five 
of  whom  in  that  year  escaped  to  the  British  lines.  Much  of 
the  iron  made  at  Durham  was  taken  to  Philadelphia  in  boats 
fashioned  somewhat  like  an  Indian  canoe,  and  first  built  at 
Durham  ;  hence  the  term  afterwards  in  common  use,  Dur- 
ham boats.  Large  quantities  of  shot  and  shells  for  the  Con- 
tinental army  were  made  at  Durham  furnace.  The  furnace 
was  in  active  operation  until  1791,  with  occasional  intervals 
of  suspension  from  various  causes,  when  it  blew  out  finally. 
In  1829  it  was  torn  down  to  make  way  for  a  grist  mill.  In 
1848  and  1851  two  new  furnaces  were  built  at  Durham,  to 
use  anthracite  coal.  In  1874  a  new  and  very  large  furnace 
was  built  to  take  the  place  of  the  two  furnaces  just  men- 
tioned, which  were  torn  down. 

At  least  two  distinguished  Americans  of  the  Revolution- 
ary period  were  identified  with  Durham  furnace.  General 
Daniel  Morgan,  son  of  James  Morgan,  "  ironmaster,"  and  one 
of  the  owners  of  the  furnace  before  1773,  was  born  in  Dur- 
ham township  in  1736.  In  early  life,  before  entering  upon 
his  adventurous  career,  he  assisted  his  father  at  the  fur- 


170  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

nace.  Tradition  says  that  he  was  also  a  charcoal  burner  at 
Durham.  George  Taylor,  a  signer  of  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence, was  at  one  time  employed  as  a  "filler"  at  Dur- 
ham furnace,  and  subsequently  he  was  the  sole  lessee  of  the 
furnace.  He  was  born  in  Ireland,  and  came  to  Pennsylva- 
nia when  a  young  man  as  a  "  redemptioner."  The  Morgan 
family  was  of  Welsh  origin.  While  George  Taylor  was  the 
lessee  of  Durham  furnace  he  cast  stoves  bearing  the  inscrip- 
tion, "  Durham  Furnace,  1774."  A  plate  of  one  of  these 
stoves,  bearing  this  inscription,  is  fastened  against  the  walls 
of  the  post-office  at  Easton. 

In  1728  James  Logan  wrote  that  "  there  are  four  furnaces 
in  blast  in  the  colony."  Colebrookdale  and  Durham  were 
two  of  these,  but  the  names  of  the  others  are  in  doubt. 

The  iron  industry  of  Pennsylvania  may  be  said  to  have 
been  fairly  established  on  a  firm  foundation  at  this  time.  In 
1728-29  the  colony  exported  274  tons  of  pig  iron  to  the  moth- 
er country.  The  production  of  a  Pennsylvania  furnace  at  this 
period  was  about  two  tons  of  iron  in  twenty-four^hours. 

The  manufacture  of  nails  in  Pennsylvania  commenced  at 
an  early  day.  In  1731  George  Megee,  nailer,  at  the*corner  of 
Front  and  Arch  streets,  Philadelphia,  advertised  for  sale,  at 
wholesale  and  retail,  all  sorts  of  nails  of  his  own  manufacture. 

The  erection  of  other  forges  and  furnaces  proceeded  with 
great  rapidity  in  the  Schuylkill  valley  and  in  other  eastern 
portions  of  Pennsylvania  after  Rutter  and  other  pioneers  had 
shown  the  way.  McCall's  forge,  afterwards  called  Glasgow 
forge,  on  Manatawny  creek,  in  Montgomery  county,  a  short 
distance  above  Pottstown  and  below  Pool  forge,  was  built  by 
George  McCall  about  1725.  Spring  forge,  on  the  Manatawny, 
in  Berks  county,  west  of  Colebrookdale  furnace  and  about  five 
miles  north  of  Douglassville,  was  built  in  1729,  probably  by 
Anthony  Morris.  These  forges,  as  well  as  Pool  forge,  were 
supplied  with  iron  from  Colebrookdale  furnace.  Green  Lane 
forge,  on  Perkiomen  creek,  in  Montgomery  county,  twenty 
miles  above  Norristown,  was  built  in  1733  by  Thomas  May- 
burry.  The  workmen  once  employed  here  were  chiefly  ne- 
gro slaves.  This  forge  was  supplied  with  pig  iron  from  Dur- 
ham furnace  before  1747.  Mount  Pleasant  furnace,  on  Perki- 
omen creek,  in  Berks  county,  thirteen  miles  above  Pottstown, 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  171 

was  built  by  Thomas  Potts,  Jr.,  in  1738.  A  forge  of  the  same 
name  was  built  before  1743.  Pine  forge,  on  the  Mana tawny, 
in  Berks  county,  about  five  miles  above  Pottstown,  was  built 
about  1740  by  Thomas  Potts,  Jr.  Oley  forge,  on  the  Mana- 
tawny,  in  Berks  county,  was  built  in  1744  by  John  Ross,  John 
Yoder,  and  John  Lesher,  as  we  learn  from  Morton  L.  Mont- 
gomery, of  Reading.  It  was  finally  abandoned  about  1870. 
Spring,  Glasgow,  Mount  Pleasant,  and  Green  Lane  forges  were 
in  operation  down  to  the  middle  of  the  present  century.  Pine 
forge  was  converted  into  Pine  rolling  mill  in  1845,  and  upon 
the  site  of  Glasgow  forge  there  was  erected  in  1874  a  rolling 
mill  which  is  now  known  as  the  Glasgow  iron  works. 

Samuel  Nutt  built  a  furnace  called  Reading,  on  French 
creek,  soon  after  he  built  Coventry  forge.  In  this  enterprise 
William  Branson  may  have  been  a  partner.  Mrs.  James  says 
that  two  furnaces  of  that  name  were  erected  about  a  mile 
from  each  other,  the  second  after  the  first  was  abandoned. 
The  second  furnace  of  this  name  was  built  on  French  creek, 
about  1736,  by  Samuel  Nutt  and  William  Branson.  In  the 
inventory  of  the  estate  of  Samuel  Nutt,  which  Gilbert  Cope, 
of  West  Chester,  has  kindly  placed  in  our  hands,  mention  is 
made  of  "  a  ring  round  the  shaft  at  the  old  furnace,"  and  of 
"one  tonn  of  sow  mettle  at  new  furnace."  Acrelius,  in  speak- 
ing of  the  iron  ore  on  French  creek,  says  :  "  Its  discoverer  is 
Mr.  Nutt,  who  afterwards  took  Mr.  Branz  into  partnership." 
The  reference  is  to  William  Branson.  This  event  occurred  as 
early  as  March  29,  1728,  as  their  names  then  appear  in  the 
Philadelphia  Weekly  Mercury  as  partners.  Acrelius  further 
says :  "  They  both  went  to  England,  brought  workmen  back 
with  them,  and  continued  together."  Mrs.  James  says  :  "  The 
15th  day  of  March,  1736,  Samuel  Nutt  and  William  Branson 
entered  into  an  agreement  with  John  Potts  to  carry  on  their 
furnace  called  Redding,  recently  built  near  Coventry,  and  of 
which  they  are  styled  'joint  owners."1  At  a  meeting  of  the 
Provincial  Council  on  January  25,  1737,  "a  petition  of  sun- 
dry inhabitants  of  the  county  of  Lancaster  was  presented  to 
the  board  and  read,  setting  forth  the  want  of  a  road  from  the 
town  of  Lancaster  to  Coventry  iron  works  on  French  creek, 
in  Chester  county,  and  praying  that  proper  persons  of  each  of 
the  counties  may  be  appointed  for  laying  out  the  same  from 


172  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Lancaster  town  to  the  said  iron  works,  one  branch  of  which 
road  to  goe  to  the  new  furnace,  called  Redding's  furnace,  now 
erecting  on  the  said  creek."  On  October  7th  of  the  same  year 
commissioners  were  appointed  to  lay  out  the  road. 

Samuel  Nutt  died  in  1737.  In  his  will,  dated  September 
25,  1737,  he  gave  one-half  of  his  "right"  to  Reading  fur- 
nace and  Coventry  forge  to  his  wife  and  the  other  half  to 
Samuel  Nutt,  Jr.,  and  his  wife.  He  also  made  provision  for 
the  erection  by  his  wife  of  a  new  furnace.  This  furnace  was 
commenced  in  the  same  year,  and  was  built  on  the  south 
branch  of  French  creek.  It  was  probably  finished  in  1738. 
In  1740  its  management  fell  into  the  hands  of  Robert  Grace, 
a  friend  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  who  had  recently  married 
the  widow  of  Samuel  Nutt,  Jr.  This  lady  was  the  grand- 
daughter of  Thomas  Rutter.  The  new  furnace  was  called 
Warwick.  The  celebrated  Franklin  stove  was  invented  by 
Benjamin  Franklin  in  1742,  and  in  his  autobiography  he 
says :  "  I  made  a  present  of  the  model  to  Mr.  Robert  Grace, 
one  of  my  early  friends,  who,  having  an  iron  furnace,  found 
the  casting  of  the  plates  for  these  stoves  a  profitable  thing, 
as  they  were  growing  in  demand."  Mrs.  James  has  seen  one 
of  these  stoves,  with  the  words  "Warwick  Furnace"  cast  on 
the  front  in  letters  two  inches  long.  Warwick  furnace  con- 
tinued in  active  operation  during  a  part  of  almost  every  year 
from  its  erection  in  1738  down  to  1867,  when  its  last  blast 
came  to  an  end  and  the  famous  furnace  was  abandoned. 
During  the  Revolution  it  was  very  active  in  casting  cannon 
for  the  Continental  army,  some  of  which  were  buried  upon 
the  approach  of  the  British  in  1777,  and  have  only  recently 
been  recovered,  having  lain  undisturbed  for  a  hundred  years. 
The  lower  part  of  the  stack  of  Warwick  furnace  still  remains. 

There  is  now  among  the  relics  in  Independence  Hall, 
Philadelphia,  a  cast-iron  bell  which  was  cast  at  Warwick  fur- 
nace in  1757  and  used  at  Valley  Forge  in  1777.  It  was  pre- 
sented to  the  authorities  of  Independence  Hall  in  1875  by 
Colonel  J.  M.  Fegar.  It  bears  the  inscription  in  raised  let- 
lers,  "  P.  R.  1757."  Mr.  J.  Wesley  Pullman,  of  Philadelphia, 
has  in  his  possession  a  highly  ornamented  stove  plate  which 
was  cast  at  Warwick  furnace  in  1764  and  bears  that  inscrip- 
tion. The  name  of  John  Potts  also  appears  on  the  plate. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  173 

After  Samuel  Nutt's  death  Reading  furnace  became  the 
property  of  his  partner,  William  Branson.  It  is  noted  on 
Nicholas  Scull's  map  of  1759.  Coventry  forge  finally  fell  to 
Samuel  Nutt's  heirs. 

At  an  uncertain  period  about  1750  William  Branson  and 
others  established  on  French  creek  the  Vincent  steel  works. 
They  are  thus  described  by  Acrelius  :  "At  French  creek,  or 
Branz's  works,  there  is  a  steel  furnace,  built  with  a  draught 
hole,  and  called  an  'air  oven.'  In  this  iron  bars  are  set  at 
the  distance  of  an  inch  apart.  Between  them  are  scattered 
horn,  coal-dust,  ashes,  etc.  The  iron  bars  are  thus  covered 
with  blisters,  and  this  is  called  'blister  steel.'  It  serves  as 
the  best  steel  to  put  upon  edge  tools.  These  steel  works  are 
now  said  to  be  out  of  operation."  Vincent  forge,  with  four 
fires  and  two  hammers,  was  connected  wi#i  Vincent  steel  fur- 
nace, but  the  date  of  its  erection  is  uncertain.  It  is  noted  on 
William  Scull's  map  of  1770.  The  furnace  and  forge  were 
located  about  six  miles  from  the  mouth  of  French  creek  and 
about  five*  miles  distant  from  Coventry  forge,  which  was  far- 
ther up  the  stream.  Before  February  15,  1797,  a  rolling  and 
slitting  mill  had  been  added  to  the  forge.  We  do  not  hear  of 
the  steel  furnace  after  1780,  nor  of  the  forge  after  1800. 

In  1742  William  Branson,  then  owner  of  Reading  furnace, 
bought  from  John  Jenkins  a  tract  of  400  acres  of  land  on 
Conestoga  creek,  near  Churchtown,  in  Caernarvon  township, 
Lancaster  county,  on.  which  he  soon  afterwards  erected  two 
forges,  called  Windsor.  In  a  short  time,  as  we  are  informed 
by  James  McCaa,  "  Branson  sold  out  to  the  English  com- 
pany, who  were  Lynford  Lardner,  Samuel  Flower,  and  Rich- 
ard Hockley,  Esqs.,  who  held  it  [Windsor]  for  thirty  years, 
when,  in  1773,  David  Jenkins,  son  of  the  original  proprietor, 
bought  the  half  interest  of  the  company  for  the  sum  of 
£2,500,  and  in  two  years  afterwards  bought  the  other  half  for 
the  sum  of  £2,400,  including  the  negroes  and  stock  used  on 
the  premises."  Robert  Jenkins  inherited  the  Windsor  forges 
from  his  father  David,  and  managed  them  with  great  success 
for  fifty  years,  dying  in  1848.  They  have  since  been  aban- 
doned. 

David  Jenkins  was  a  member  of  the  Pennsylvania  legisla- 
ture in  1784.  Robert  Jenkins  was  a  member  of  the  legisla- 


174  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

ture  in  1804  and  1805,  and  from  1807  to  1811  he  was  a  mem- 
ber of  Congress.  Mrs.  Martha  J.  Nevin,.  of  Lancaster,  who 
died  at  her  home  near  that  city  on  January  13,  1890,  at  the 
age  of  85  years,  was  a  daughter  of  Robert  Jenkins. 

Acrelius,  narrating  events  which  occurred  between  1750 
and  1756,  mentions  the  enterprises  of  Nutt  and  Branson  as 
follows  :  "  Each  has  his  own  furnace — Branz  at  Reading,  Nutt 
at  Warwick.  Each  also  has  his  own  forges — Branz  in  Wind- 
sor. Nutt  supplies  four  forges  besides  his  own  in  Chester 
county."  Nutt  was  not  living  at  the  time  this  was  written, 
but  Acrelius's  confounding  of  ownership  is  easily  understood. 
Nor  is  it  probable  that  Branson  operated  Windsor  forges  in 
1750.  In  that  year  he  is  reported  as  having  then  owned  a 
furnace  for  making  steel  in  Philadelphia,  and  about  1743  it  is 
known  that  he  sold  .Windsor  forges  to  the  English  company, 
which  was  composed  of  his  sons-in-law.  William  Branson 
was  himself  an  Englishman,  who  emigrated  to  Pennsylvania 
about  1708  and  became  a  Philadelphia  merchant.  He  died 
in  1760. 

Continuing  up  the  Schuylkill  valley  we  find  in  1751  a 
forge  called  Mount  Joy,  at  the  mouth  of  East  Valley  creek, 
on  the  Chester  county  side  of  the  creek,  one-third  of  which 
was  advertised  for  sale  on  the  4th  of  April  of  that  year  by 
Daniel  Walker,  and  the  remaining  two-thirds  on  the  26th  of 
September  of  the  same  year  by  Stephen  Evans  and  Joseph 
Williams.  In  Daniel  Walker's  advertisement  it  was  stated 
that  the  forge  was  "  not  so  far  distant  from  three  furnaces." 
Pennypacker,  in  his  Annals  of  Phcenixville  and  its  Vicinity, 
says  that  the  ancestor  of  the  Walker  family  had  come  from 
England  with  William  Penn,  and  "  at  a  very  early  date  had 
erected  the  small  forge  on  the  Valley  creek."  It  is  clear,  how- 
ever, that  in  1751  Daniel  Walker  owned  only  one-third  of  the 
forge,  Evans  and  Williams  owning  the  remainder.  In  1757, 
as  we  learn  from  Mrs.  James,  the  forge  was  sold  to  John 
Potts  by  the  executors  of  Stephen  Evans.  In  1773  it  was 
owned  by  Joseph  Potts,  at  which  time  it  continued  to  be  le- 
gally designated  as  Mount  Joy  forge,  although  for  some  time 
previously  it  had  been  popularly  known  as  Valley  forge.  In 
that  year  Joseph  Potts  sold  one-half  of  the  forge  to  Colonel 
William  Dewees.  The  pig  iron  used  at  Valley  forge  was  sup- 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  175 

plied  by  Warwick  furnace.  In  September,  1777,  the  forge  was 
burned  by  the  British,  and  in  December  of  the  same  year  the 
Continental  army  under  Washington  was  intrenched  on  the 
Montgomery  county  side  of  Valley  creek,  opposite  to  Valley 
forge.  General  Washington's  headquarters  were  established 
at  the  substantial  stone  house  of  Isaac  Potts,  also  on  the 
Montgomery  county  side  of  Valley  creek.  This  house  is  still 
standing.  Isaac  Potts  was  not,  however,  at  this  time  an  owner 
of  Valley  forge. 

After  the  Revolutionary  war  was  ended  Isaac  and  David 
Potts,  brothers,  erected  another  forge,  on  the  Montgomery 
county  side  of  Valley  creek,  and  about  three-eighths  of  a 
mile  below  the  old  Mount  Joy  forge.  A  new  dam  was  built, 
which  raised  the  water  partly  over  the  site  of  the  old  forge. 
About  the  same  time,  and  as  early  as  1786,  a  slitting  mill 
was  built  on  the  Chester  county  side  of  the  stream  by  the 
same  persons.  The  new  forge  was  called  Valley  forge.  It 
was  in  ruins  in  1816.  Other  iron  enterprises,  of  a  repro- 
ductive character,  were  established  at  the  town  of  Valley 
Forge  early  in  the  present  century,  and  about  1818  cast  steel 
to  be  used  in  the  manufacture  of  saws  was  made  here  for  a 
short  time.  About  1824  all  the  iron  works  at  Valley  Forge 
were  discontinued. 

William  Bird  was  an  enterprising  Englishman  who  es- 
tablished several  iron  enterprises  in  Berks  county  before  the 
Revolution.  A  person  of  this  name  was  a  witness  of  Thomas 
Rutter's  will  on  November  27, 1728,  when  he  appears  to  have 
been  a  resident  of  Amity  township,  Berks  county.  In  1740 
or  1741  William  Bird  built  a  forge  on  Hay  creek,  near  its 
entrance  into  the  Schuylkill,  where  Birdsboro  now  stands. 
Hopewell  furnace,  on  French  creek,  in  Union  township,  which 
was  in  operation  in  1883  but  is  now  abandoned,  is  said  by  tra- 
dition to  have  been  built  by  William  Bird  in  1759,  but  it  may 
have  been  built  by  his  son,  Mark  Bird,  about  1765.  As  early 
as  1760  William  Bird  built  Roxborough  furnace,  in  Heidel- 
berg township,  the  name  of  which  furnace  was  subsequently 
changed  to  Berkshire.  Dying  in  1762  his  estate  was  divided 
between  his  widow  and  his  six  children.  Berkshire  furnace 
fell  to  his  son,  Mark  Bird,  who  sold  it  in  1764  to  John  Patton 
and  his  wife  Bridget,  who  had  been  the  wife  of  William  Bird. 


176  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

In  1789  Bridget  Patton,  again  a  widow,  sold  the  furnace  to 
George  Ege,  who  abandoned  it  about  1792,  in  which  year  he 
built  Reading  furnace,  on  Spring  creek,  in  Heidelberg  town- 
ship. On  the  site  of  Reading  furnace  two  Robesonia  fur- 
naces were  afterwards  built,  only  one  of  which  is  now  stand- 
ing. Berkshire  furnace  manufactured  shot  and  shells  for  the 
Continental  army.  Mark  Bird  built  a  rolling  and  slitting 
mill  and  a  nail  factory  at  Birdsboro  about  the  time  of  the 
Revolution.  At  Trenton,  New  Jersey,  he  manufactured  wire. 
He  failed  in  business  about  1788. 

Charming  forge,  on  Tulpehocken  creek,  in  Berks  county, 
was  built  in  1749  by  John  George  Nikoll,  a  hammersmith, 
and  Michael  Miller.  It  was  at  first  styled  Tulpehocken  Eisen 
Hammer.  Mr.  Montgomery  says  that  it  was  owned  in  1763 
by  Henry  William  Stiegel,  and  that  in  1774  it  was  purchased 
by  George  Ege.  About  1777  Mr.  Ege  purchased  from  Con- 
gress the  services  of  thirty-four  Hessian  prisoners,  for  the 
purpose  of  cutting  a  channel  through  a  bed  of  rock  to  sup- 
ply with  water-power  a  slitting  mill  which  he  had  previously 
erected.  W.  &  B.  F.  Taylor,  the  last  owners  of  the  forge, 
inform  us  that  the  mill-race  here  referred  to  was  about  100 
yards  long,  from  12  to  20  feet  deep,  and  about  20  feet  wide, 
and  that  it  was  cut  through  a  mass  of  solid  slate  rock  as 
smoothly  as  if  done  with  a  broad-axe.  It  was  used  until 
1887,  when  the  forge  was  abandoned.  In  1889  the  forge  dam 
was  washed  away  by  a  freshet. 

George  Ege  was  for  almost  fifty  years  one  of  the  most 
prominent  ironmasters  in  Pennsylvania.  His  possessions  in 
Berks  county  were  at  one  time  princely.  He  died  in  Decem- 
ber, 1830.  He  was  a  native  of  Holland. 

On  William  Scull's  map  of  1770  Moselem  forge,  on  Maid- 
en creek,  Berks  county,  and  Gulf  forge,  on  Gulf  creek,  in  Up- 
per Merion  township,  Montgomery  county,  are  noted.  Helm- 
stead,  Union,  and  Pottsgrove  were  the  names  of  other  forges 
existing  as  early  as  1759  in  the  Schuylkill  valley. 

Oley  furnace,  on  Furnace  creek,  a  branch  of  Mana tawny 
creek,  about  eleven  miles  northeast  of  Reading,  was  built 
about  1765,  probably  by  Dietrich  Welcker,  as  we  learn  from 
Mr.  Montgomery.  It  was  last  in  operation  in  1886,  but  was 
abandoned  in  1887  and  dismantled  in  1888. 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  177 

There  was  a  forge  on  Crum  creek,  about  two  miles  above 
the  town  of  Chester,  in  Delaware  county,  which  was  built  by 
John  Crosby  and  Peter  Dicks  about  1742.  Peter  Kalm,  the 
Swede,  in  his  Travels  into  North  America,  written  in  1748  and 
1749,  thus  describes  it:  "About  two  English  miles  behind 
Chester  I  passed  by  an  iron  forge,  which  was  to  the  right 
hand  by  the  road -side.  It  belonged  to  two  brothers,  as  I  was 
told.  The  ore,  however,  is  not  clug  here,  but  thirty  or  forty 
miles  from  hence,  where  it  is  first  melted  in  the  oven,  and 
then  carried  to  this  place.  The  bellows  were  made  of  leather, 
and  both  they  and  the  hammers  and  even  the  hearth  [were] 
but  small  in  proportion  to  ours.  All  the  machines  were 
worked  by  water.  The  iron  was  wrought  into  bars."  The 
oven  here  referred  to  was  a  blast  furnace,  which  was  prob- 
ably located  in  the  Schuylkill  valley,  the  pigs  for  the  forge 
being  boated  down  the  Schuylkill  and  the  Delaware  and  up 
Crum  creek.  Acrelius  says  that  the  forge  was  owned  at  the 
time  of  his  visit  by  Peter  Dicks,  and  that  it  had  two  stacks, 
was  worked  sluggishly,  and  had  "ruined  Crosby's  family." 

As  early  as  1742  John  Taylor  built  a  forge  on  Chester 
creek,  in  Thornbury  township,  Delaware  county,  where  Glen 
Mills  now  stand,  which  he  called  Sarum  iron  works.  In  1746 
he  added  a  rolling  and  slitting  mill.  These  works  are  said 
to  have  been  carried  on  with  energy  by  Mr.  Taylor  until  his 
death  in  1756.  Acrelius,  writing  about  the  time  of  Mr.  Tay- 
lor's death,  says :  "  Sarum  belongs  to  Taylor's  heirs,  has  three 
'stacks,  and  is  in  full  blast."  Peter  Kalm  states  that  at  Chi- 
chester  (Marcus  Hook)  "  they  build  here  every  year  a  number 
of  small  ships  for  sale,  and  from  an  iron  work  which  lies 
higher  up  in  the  conn-try  they  carry  iron  bars  to  this  place 
and  ship  them."  This  iron  work  was  probably  Sarum.  Tay- 
lor's rolling  and  slitting  mill  was  the  first  in  Pennsylvania. 

John  Taylor  was  descended  from  a  family  of  the  same 
name  in  Wiltshire,  England,  and  was  a  nephew  of  Jacob  Tay- 
lor, who  was  surveyor-general  of  Pennsylvania  from  1707  to 
1733.  His  business  operations  were  upon  an  extensive  and 
varied  scale,  and  included  the  manufacture  of  nails  as  well  as 
nail  rods.  The  tradition  is  preserved  by  his  descendants  that 
soon  after  the  erection  of  the  slitting  mill  his  storekeeper,  in 
making  one  of  his  periodical  visits  to  England  to  replenish 


178  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

his  stock,  surprised  the  Liverpool  merchants  by  telling  them 
that  he  could  buy  nails  at  Taylor's  mill  at  lower  prices  than 
they  quoted,  a  revelation  which  added  weight  to  the  clamor 
then  prevailing  in  England  for  the  suppression  of  slitting 
mills  and  similar  iron  establishments  in  America,  and  which 
agitation  resulted  in  the  passage  in  1750  of  an  act  of  Parlia- 
ment which  prohibited  the  further  erection  of  such^works. 
But,  as  this  act  did  not  prohibit  the  carrying  on  of  works  that 
had  already  been  erected,  Taylor's  slitting  mill  was  kept  in 
operation  after  his  death,  first  by  his  son  John  and  afterwards 
by  the  latter's  son-in-law,  Colonel  Persifor  Frazer.  During  the 
Revolution  the  superintendence  of  the  estate,  including  the 
management  of  the  iron  works,  devolved  upon  Mrs.  Frazer. 
The  works  were  abandoned  soon  after  the  war,  owing  in  part 
to  the  industrial  depression  which  then  prevailed. 

In  1750  there  was  a  "plating  forge  to  work  with  a  tilt- 
hammer  "  in  Byberry  township,  in  the  northeastern  part  of 
Philadelphia  county,  the  only  one  in  the  province,  owned  b»y 
John  Hall,  but  not  then  in  use.  In  the  same  year  there 
were  two  steel  furnaces  in  Philadelphia,  one  of  which,  Ste- 
phen Paschall's,  was  built  in  1747  and  stood  on  a  lot  on  the 
northwest  corner  of  Eighth  and  Walnut  streets ;  the  other  fur- 
nace was  owned  by  William  Branson,  and  was  located  near 
where  Thomas  Penn  "  first  lived,  at  the  upper  end  of  Chest- 
nut street."  These  furnaces  were  fcfr  the  production  of  blister 
steel.  There  appear  to  have  been  no  other  steel  furnaces  in 
the  province  in  1750.  Whitehead  Humphreys  was  in  1770 
the  proprietor  of  a  steel  furnace  on  Seventh  street,  between 
Market  and  Chestnut  streets,  in  Philadelphia,  where  he  also 
made  edge  tools.  In  February,  1775,  Uriah  Woolman  and  B. 
Shoemaker,  "  in  Market  street,  Philadelphia,"  advertised  in 
Dunlap's  Pennsylvania  Packet  "  Pennsylvania  steel,  manufac- 
tured by  W.  Humphreys,  of  an  excellent  quality,  and  war- 
ranted equal  to  English,  to  be  sold  in  blister,  faggot,  or  flat 
bar,  suitable  for  carriage  springs."  In  Watson's  Annals  it  is 
stated  that  about  the  year  1790  John  Nancarro,  a  Scotchman, 
"  had  a  furnace  underground  for  converting  iron  into  steel," 
located  at  the  northwest  corner  of  Ninth  and  Walnut  streets, 
Philadelphia.  We  have  already  referred  to  the  Vincent  steel 
works  in  Chester  county. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  179 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  PENNSYLVANIA 
EXTENDED  TO  THE  SUSQUEHANNA. 

ELIZABETH  FURNACE,  near  Brickersville,  on  Middle  creek, 
a  tributary  of  Conestoga  creek,  in  Lancaster  county,  was 
built  about  1750  by  John  Huber,  a  German.  It  was  a  small 
furnace,  and  did  not  prove  to  be  profitable.  In  1757  Huber 
sold  it  to  Henry  William  Stiegel  and  his  partners,  who  built  a 
new  and  larger  furnace,  which  was  operated  until  1775,  when, 
through  Stiegel's  embarrassments,  it  passed  into  the  hands  of 
Daniel  Benezet,  who  leased  it  to  Robert  Coleman,  who  subse- 
quently bought  it  and  eventually  became  the  most  prominent 
ironmaster  in  Pennsylvania  at  the  close  of  the  last  century 
and  far  into  the  present  century.  Bishop  says  that  "  some  of 
the  first  stoves  cast  in  this  country  were  made  by  Baron  Stie- 
gel, relics  of  which  still  remain  in  the  old  families  of  Lancas- 
ter and  Lebanon  counties."  Rev.  Joseph  Henry  Dubbs,  of 
Lancaster,  says  that  Stiegel's  stoves  bore  the  inscription : 

Baron  Stiegel  ist  der  Mann 
Der  die  Of  en  machen  kann. 

That  is,  "  Baron  Stiegel  is  the  man  who  knows  how  to  make 
stoves."  On  the  furnace  erected  by  Huber  the  following  le- 
gend was  inscribed  : 

Johann  Huber,  der  erste  Deutsche  Mann 
Der  das  Eisenwerk  vollfuhren  'kann. 

Freely  translated  this  inscription  reads  :  "  John  Huber  is  the 
first  German  who  knows  how  to  make  iron." 

In  1885  a  cast-iron  plate,  about  two  and  a  half  feet  square, 
was  found  doing  duty  as  the  hearth  of  an  old-fashioned  fire- 
place in  Lancaster.  It  bore  on  the  under  side  an  inscription 
which  was  not  altogether  legible,  but  the  words  "  Stiegle  " 
and  "  Elizabeth,"  and  the  date  "  1758  "  were  plainly  legible. 
The  spelling  of  the  Baron's  name  on  this  iron  plate  differs 
from  the  usual  spelling,  but  this  may  have  been  an  error  of 
the  pattern  maker. 


180  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Stiegel's  ownership  of  Charming  forge  in  1763  has  here- 
tofore been  mentioned.  In  that  year  he  sold  a  half  interest 
to  Charles  and  Alexander  Stedman,  of  Philadelphia,  and  in 
1773  the  sheriff  sold  his  remaining  interest.  Soon  after  1760 
he  established  a  glass  factory  at  Manheim,  in  Lancaster 
county,  called  the  American  flint-glass  factory,  which  was  in 
operation  as  late  as  1774.  He  was  a  native  of  Germany,  ar- 
riving in  this  country  on  August  31, 1750,  (old  style,)  in  the 
ship  Nancy,  from  Rotterdam.  He  is  buried  in  the  Lutheran 
graveyard  near  Womelsdorf,  in  Heidelberg  township,  Berks 
county.  In  his  last  days  he  taught  school  in  this  township. 

After  Elizabeth  furnace  came  into  the  possession  of  Robert 
Coleman  he  cast  shot  and  shells  and  cannon  for  the  Conti- 
nental army,  and  some  of  the  transactions  which  occurred  be- 
tween him  and  the  Government  in  settlement  of  his  accounts 
for  these  supplies  are  very  interesting.  On  November  16, 
1782,  appears  the  following  entry  :  "  By  cash,  being  the  value 
of  42  German  prisoners  of  war,  at  £30  each,  £1,260 ; "  and  on 
June  14,  1783,  the  following :  "  By  cash,  being  the  value  of  28 
German  prisoners  of  war,  at  £30  each,  £840."  In  a  foot-note 
to  these  credits  Robert  Coleman  certifies  "on  honour"  that 
the  above  70  prisoners  were  all  that  were  ever  secured  by 
him,  one  of  whom  being  returned  is  to  be  deducted  when  he 
produces  the  proper  voucher.  Rupp,  in  his  history  of  Lan- 
caster county,  mentions  that  in  1843  he  visited  one  of  the 
Hessian  mercenaries  who  was  disposed  of  in  this  manner  at 
the  close  of  the  war  for  the  sum  of  £80,  for  the  term  of 
three  years,  to  Captain  Jacob  Zimmerman  of  that  county. 

Elizabeth  furnace  continued  in  operation  until  1856,  when 
it  was  abandoned  by  its  owner,  Hon.  G.  Dawson  Coleman, 
the  grandson  of  Robert  Coleman,  for  want  of  wood. 

Among  the  persons  who  were  employed  at  Windsor  forges 
under  the  English  company  wras  James  Old,  a  forgeman. 
About  1765  he  built  Pool  forge,  on  Conestoga  creek,  about  a 
mile  below  Windsor  forges.  Early  records  mention  his  own- 
ership of  Quitapahilla  forge,  near  Lebanon,  and  other  forges 
in  Chester,  Lancaster,  and  Berks  counties.  In  1773  he  was 
a  lessee  of  Reading  furnace,  on  French  creek.  In  1795  he 
conveyed  Pool  forge  and  about  700  acres  of  land  attached 
to  it  to  his  son,  Davies  Old. 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  181 

James  Old  was  born  in  Wales  in  1730.  He  emigrated  to 
Pennsylvania  previous  to  September  7, 1754,  when  his  name 
for  the  first  time  appears  in  the  register  of  Bangor  church,  at 
Churchtown,  Lancaster  county,  as  the  contributor  of  ,£5  to- 
ward the  erection  of  the  church  building.  Soon  after  his  set- 
tlement at  Windsor  he  married  Margaretta  Davies,  a  daugh- 
ter of  Gabriel  Davies,  of  Lancaster  county.  Gabriel  Davies  is 
supposed  to  have  been  the  owner  of  the  site  on  which  Pool 
forge  was  built.  James  Old  died  on  May  1, 1809,  in  his  79th 
year,  and  is  buried  in  the  graveyard  of  Bangor  church.  He 
was  one  of  the  most  enterprising  and  successful  of  early 
Pennsylvania  ironmasters.  He  had  a  brother  William,  .also 
a  forgeman,  who  had  been  employed  at  Windsor  forges,  and 
who  is  said  to  have  embarked  in  the  manufacture  of  bar  iron 
on  his  own  account.  James  Old  was  a  member  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania legislature  in  1791,  1792,  and  1793. 

William  Old,  a  son  of  James  Old,  married  Elizabeth  Stiegel, 
the  daughter  of  Baron  Stiegel.  She  is  buried  in  the  same  rural 
graveyard  which  holds  the  remains  of  her  father.  The  late 
Mrs.  Henry  Morris,  of  Philadelphia,  was  her  granddaughter. 

Robert  Coleman  was  .in  his  younger  days  in  the  service 
of  James  Old,  and  while  with  him  at  Reading  furnace  in  1773 
he  married  his  daughter  Ann.  Soon  afterwards  he  rented 
Salford  forge,  above  Norristown,  in  Montgomery  county,  and 
remained  there  three  years.  While  at  this  forge  he  man- 
ufactured chain  bars,  which  were  used  to  span  the  Delaware 
river  for  the  defense  of  Philadelphia  against  the  approach  of 
the  British  fleet.  From  Salford  forge  he  went  to  Elizabeth 
furnace.  He  was  born  near  Castle  Fin,  in  Donegal  county, 
and  not  far*  from  the  city  of  Londonderry,  in  Ireland,  on  the 
4th  of  November,  1748.  In  1764,  when  16  years  old,  he  left 
Ireland  for  America.  He  died  at  Lancaster  in  1825,  at  which 
place  he  is  buried.  He  was  an  officer  in  the  Pennsylvania 
militia  during  the  Revolution,  a  member  of  the  State  con- 
vention which  framed  the  Constitution  of  1790,  a  member  of 
the  legislature,  raised  and  commanded  a  troop  of  cavalry 
during  the  whisky  insurrection,  was  a  Presidential  elector-at- 
large  in  1792  and  a  Presidential  elector  for  his  Congressional 
district  in  1796,  and  for  nearly  twenty  years  was  an  associate 
judge  of  Lancaster  county. 


182  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Cyrus  Jacobs  married  Margaretta,  another  daughter  of 
James  Old,  about  1782.  At  that  time  Mr.  Jacobs  was  living 
at  Churchtown,  in  the  employment  of  James  Old  as  a  clerk 
at  Pool  forge.  He  was  at  Gibraltar  forge  in  Berks  county  in 
1787  and  at  Hopewell  forge  in  Lancaster  county  from  1789 
to  1792.  In  1793  he  built  Spring  Grove  forge,  on  Conestoga 
creek,  about  three  miles  west  of  Pool  forge,  and  in  1799  he 
purchased  Pool  forge  from  Davies  Old.  Pool  forge  was  active 
until  1861  or  1862,  and  Spring  Grove  for^e  until  1866,  after 
which  years  they  were  respectively  abandoned.  Cyrus  Jacobs 
was  born  in  1761,  and  died  in  1830  at  Whitehall,  near  Church- 
town.  He  is  buried  in  the  graveyard  of  Bangor  church. 

Cornwall  furnace,  located  within  the  limits  of  the  now 
celebrated  Cornwall  ore  hills,  on  Furnace  creek,  in  Lebanon 
county,  a  few  miles  south  of  Lebanon,  was  built  in  1742  by 
Peter  Grubb,  whose  descendants  to  this  day  have  been  prom- 
inent Pennsylvania  ironmasters.  He  was  the  son  of  John 
Grubb,  a  native  of  Cornwall,  in  England,  who  emigrated  to 
this  country  in  the  preceding  century,  landing  at  Grubb 's 
Landing,  on  the  Delaware,  near  Wilmington,  at  which  lat- 
ter place  he  is  buried.  There  is  evidence  that  Peter  Grubb 
was  already  an  ironmaster  before  he  built  Cornwall  furnace, 
and  a  tradition  in  his  family  says  that  in  1735  he  built  a 
furnace  or  bloomary,  most  likely  the  latter,  about  five-eighths 
of  a  mile  from  the  site  of  Cornwall  furnace.  He  died  intes- 
tate about  1754,  and  his  estate,  including  the  Cornwall  ore 
hills,  descended  to  his  two  sons,  Curtis  and  Peter  Grubb,  who 
were  afterwards  colonels  during  the  Revolution. 

A  few  years  after  the  death  of  Peter  Grubb  Acrelius  wrote 
of  Cornwall  furnace  as  follows :  "  Cornwall,  or  Grubb's  iron 
works,  in  Lancaster  county.  The  mine  is  rich  and  abundant, 
forty  feet  deep,  commencing  two  feet  under  the  earth's  surface. 
The  ore  is  somewhat  mixed  with  sulphur  and  copper.  Peter 
Grubb  was  its  discoverer.  Here  there  is  a  furnace  which 
makes  twenty-four  tons  of  iron  a  week  and  keeps  six  forges 
regularly  at  work — two  of  his  own,  two  belonging  to  Germans 
in  the  neighborhood,  and  two  in  Maryland.  The  pig  iron  is 
carried  to  the  Susquehanna  river,  thence  to  Maryland,  and 
finally  to  England.  The  bar  iron  is  sold  mostly  in  the  country 
and  in  the  interior  towns  ;  the  remainder  in  Philadelphia.  It 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  183 

belongs  to  the  heirs  of  the  Grubb  estate,  but  is  now  rented  to 
Gurrit  &  Co."  This  firm  was  doubtless  Garret  &  Co. 

During  the  Revolution  Cornwall  furnace  cast  cannon  and 
shot  and  shells  for  the  Continental  army.  It  was  in  opera- 
tion as  late  as  1882,  and  is  still  in  good  condition.  It  is  the 
oldest  charcoal  furnace  in  the  United  States  that  is  yet  stand- 
ing in  its  entirety.  It  has  always  used  charcoal. 

In  1785  Robert  Coleman  purchased  a  one-sixth  interest  in 
Cornwall  furnace  and  the  ore  hills.  After  that -year,  through 
successive  purchases  from  the  Grubbs,  he  obtained  four  addi- 
tional sixths  of  the  Cornwall  property.  His  total  purchases 
of  this  valuable  property  remain  in  the  hands  of  his  descend- 
ants at  this  day. 

Martic  forge,  on  Pequea  creek,  near  the  present  village  of 
Colemanville,  in  Lancaster  county,  was  built  in  1755,  and  was 
last  in  operation  in  1883.  Early  in  this  century  cemented, 
or  blister,  steel  was  made  here.  Robert  S.  Potts,  one  of  the 
last  owners  of  Martic  forge,  wrote  us  a  few  years  ago  as  fol- 
lows :  "  There  used  to  be  a  small  rolling  mill  near  the  forge 
that  stopped  running  some  fifty  years  ago.  There  was  also 
a  charcoal  furnace  called  Martic  six  miles  east  of  the  forge, 
but  I  have  been  unable  to  ascertain  its  history  beyond  the 
fact  that  it  was  owned  and  operated  by  the  Martic  Forge 
Company ;  when  that  was,  however,  or  how  long  it  was  in  blast, 
I  can  not  learn.  The  old  cinder  bank  is  still  visible.  During 
the  Revolution  round  iron  was  drawn  under  the  hammer  at 
the  forge  and  bored  out  for  musket  barrels  at  a  boring  mill, 
in  a  very  retired  spot,  on  a  small  stream  far  off  from  any  pub- 
lic road,  doubtless  with  a  view  to  prevent  discovery  by  the  en- 
emy. The  site  is  still  visible."  In  1769  Martic  furnace  and 
forge  were  advertised  for  sale  by  the  sheriff,  together  with 
3,400  acres  of  land  and  other  property,  "  all  late  the  property 
of  Thomas  Smith,  James  Wallace,  and  James  Fulton."  The 
furnace  was  in  existence  about  1793,  but  was  not  then  active. 

Robert  S.  Potts,  surviving  partner  of  the  firm  of  Davies 
&  Potts,  which  owned  Martic  forge  for  many  years,  died  in 
June,  1886.  Negro  slaves  were  employed  from  the  beginning 
in  hammering  iron  at  this  forge,  and  it  is  a  ourious  fact  that 
negroes  continued  to  be  the  principal  workmen  down  to  the 
abandonment  of  active  operations  in  1883.  The  forge  was 


184  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

finally  abandoned  in  1886.     A  long  row  of  stone  houses  was 
occupied  by  the  negro  workmen. 

Hopewell  forge,  on  Hammer  creek,  in  Lancaster  county, 
about  ten  miles  south  of  Lebanon,  was  built  by  Peter  Grubb 
soon  after  he  built  Cornwall  furnace.  Speedwell  forge  on  the 
same  stream,  near  Brick ersville,  in  Lancaster  county,  was  built 
about  1750,  also  by  Peter  Grubb. 

The  iron  industry  of  Pennsylvania  crossed  the  Susque- 
hanna  at  a  very  early  period.  Acrelius  says  that  there  was 
a  bloomary  in  York  county  in  1756,  owned  by  Peter  Dicks, 
who  had  but  recently  discovered  "the  mine."  In  Gibson's 
History  of  York  County  George  R.  Prowell,  of  York,  locates 
this  bloomary  in  Jackson  township,  on  a  branch  of  Codorus 
creek,  where  a  forge  known  as  Spring  forge  was  built  in  1770 
to  take  the  place  of  the  bloomary.  This  forge  was  in  opera- 
tion as  late  as  1850,  but  was  abandoned  in  that  year.  Spring 
forge  was  a  famous  enterprise  in  its  day,  pig  iron  being  sup- 
plied to  it  from  neighboring  furnaces. 

""  The  researches  of  Mr.  Prowell  establish  the  fact  that  the 
first  blast  furnace  west  of  the  Susquehanna  was  built  in  1763 
on  Furnace  creek,  in  West  Manheim  township,  in  the  extreme 
southwestern  part  of  York  county,  by  George  Ross,  a  lawyer 
of  Lancaster,  and  Mark  Bird,  of  Philadelphia.  It  was  called 
Mary  Ann  furnace.  The  building  of  the  furnace  was  com- 
menced in  1762.  In  1763  the  owners  petitioned  the  court  of 
York  county  to  open  a  public  road  from  their 'furnace  "  late- 
ly built  at  a  great  expense  "  to  the  road  from  the  Conewago 
settlement  to  Baltimore,  and  in  1766  they  petitioned  the  court 
to  open  a  road  from  their  furnace  to  the  Monocacy  road  at 
Frederick  Eichelberger's  tavern.  The  name  of  the  firm  which 
owned  the  furnace  was  George  Ross  &  Co.  A  great  many 
stoves  were  cast  at  this  furnace,  and  during  the  Revolution 
it  cast  many  shot  and  shells.  It  finally  went  out  of  blast 
about  1800.  George  Ross  was  one  of  the  signers  of  the  Dec- 
laration of  Independence. 

In  1765  a  forge  was  erected  by  William  Bennett  on  the 
south  side  of  Codorus  creek,  near  its  junction  with  the  Sus- 
quehanna, in  Hellam  township,  York  county.  In  1810  the 
property,  which  had  previously  been  known  as  Hellam  forge, 
was  bought  by  Henry  Grubb,  and  after  that  date  the  works 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  185 

^ 

were  known  as  Codorus  forge.  In  1836  Mr.  Grubb  added  a 
charcoal  furnace,  which  made  pig  iron  for  the  forge.  Pre- 
vious to  this  time  the  forge  was  supplied  with  pig  iron  from 
Cornwall  and  other  neighboring  furnaces.  Bar  iron  was  ship- 
ped down  the  Susquehanna  to  tidewater  and  thence  to  Balti- 
more and  Philadelphia.  James  Smith,  a  signer  of  the  Dec- 
laration, owned  these  works  during  the  Revolution,  and  they 
were  the  cause  of  his  financial  ruin.  The  furnace  ceased  op- 
erations in  1850.  The  forge  had  previously  been  abandoned. 

Soon  after  1762  a  furnace  and  forge  were  built  at  Boiling 
Springs,  in  Cumberland  county,  forming  the  nucleus  of  the 
Carlisle  iron  works,  which  afterwards  embraced  a  blast  fur- 
nace, a  rolling  and  slitting  mill,  and  a  steel  furnace.  The 
furnace  and  forge  were  built  by  a  company  composed  of  Jo- 
seph Morris,  John  Morris,  Samuel  Morris,  Amos  Stuttle,  and 
John  Armstrong,  all  of  Philadelphia.  The  site  of  these  en- 
terprises, with  some  contiguous  territory,  was  purchased  from 
John  Bigby  and  Nathan  Giles.  Michael  Ege  owned  them 
after  1782.  On  a  tax  list  at  Carlisle  Robert  Thornburg  &  Co. 
appear  as  the  owners  of  a  forge  in  1767  to  which  1,200  acres 
of  land  were  attached.  We  can  not  locate  this  forge.  Pine 
Grove  furnace,  in  the  same  county,  was  built  about  1770  by 
Thornburg  &  Arthur.  In  1782  Michael  Ege  became  a  part 
owner  of  the  furnace  and  subsequently  sole  owner.  A  forge 
called  Laurel,  built  in  1830,  was  attached  to  this  furnace. 
Both  the  furnace  and  forge  are  still  in  operation.  Holly  fur- 
nace and  forge,  at  Mount  Holly  Springs,  in  the  same  county, 
are  said  to  have  been  built  about  1770  by  a  Mr.  Stevenson. 
The  sites  of  both  enterprises  are  stiM.  visible.  The  forge  was 
in  existence  as  late  as  1848.  The  furnace  was  torn  down  in 
1855  to  give  place  to  a  paper  mill.  It  was  once  owned  by 
Michael  Ege. 

No  other  iron  works  west  of  the  Susquehanna  are  known 
to  have  been  established  previous  to  the  Revolution. 


186  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

CHARACTERISTICS   OF    THE    EARLY    IRON  INDUSTRY 
OF   PENNSYLVANIA. 

ALTHOUGH  all  the  iron  enterprises  that  were  established 
in  Pennsylvania  prior  to  the  Revolution  have  not  been  men- 
tioned in  the  preceding  pages,  those  which  have  been  men- 
tioned indicate  remarkable  activity  in  the  development  of  the 
iron  resources  1)f  the  province.  Pennsylvania  was  almost  the 
last  of  the  thirteen  colonies  to  be  occupied  by  permanent  Eng- 
lish settlements,  and  even  after  these  settlements  were  made 
a  long  time  elapsed,  very  strangely,  before  the  erection  of  iron 
works  was  successfully  undertaken.  The  manufacture  of  iron 
was  not  fairly  commenced  in  Pennsylvania  until  1716,  but 
after  this  time  it  grew  rapidly,  and  in  the  sixty  years  which 
intervened  before  the  commencement  of  hostilities  with  the 
mother  country  probably  sixty  blast  furnaces  and  forges  and 
several  slitting  mills  and  steel  works  were  built,  a  rate  of 
progress  which  was  not  attained  by  any  other  colony  in  the 
same  period. 

^  In  his  History  of  Netv  Sweden  Acrelius  says :  "  Pennsyl- 
vania, in  regard  to  its  iron  works,  is  the  most  advanced  of  all 
the  American  colonies."  Many  of  these  enterprises  were  up- 
on a  scale  that  would  have  done  credit  to  a  much  later  pe- 
riod of  the  American  iron  industry.  Cornwall  and  Warwick 
furnaces  were  each  32  feet  high,  21£  feet  square  at  the  base, 
and  11  feet  square  at  the  top.  Warwick  was  at  first  9  feet 
wide  at  the  boshes,  but  was  afterwards  reduced  to  7£  feet. 
The  forges  were  usually  those  in  which  pig  iron  was  refined 
into  bar  iron  "in  the  Walloon  style,"  as  stated  by  Acrelius. 
There  were  few  ore  bloomaries,  and  nearly  all  of  these  were 
built  at  an  early  day.  Acrelius-  mentions  only  one  of  this 
class — Peter  Dicks'  bloomary,  in  York  county.  The  smaller 
furnaces  yielded  only  from  1-J-  to  2  tons  of  pig  iron  daily,  but 
the  larger  ones  yielded  from  3  to  4  tons.  Reading,  Warwick, 
and  Cornwall  furnaces  each  made  from  25  to  30  tons  of  iron 
per  week.  The  furnaces  were  required  to  produce  both  pig 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  187 

iron  and  castings,  the  latter  consisting  of  stoves,  pots,  kettles, 
andirons,  and  similar  articles.  Of  the  product  of  the  forges 
Acrelius  says  that  "  one  forge,  with  three  hearths  in  good  con- 
dition and  well  attended  to,  is  expected  to  give  2  tons  a  week." 
The  same  writer  says  that  "  for  four  months  in  summer,  when 
the  heat  is  most  oppressive,  all  labor  is  suspended  at  the 
furnaces  and  forges."  The  scarcity  of  water  at  this  season 
would  also  have  much  to  do  with  this  suspension,  all  of  the 
works  being  operated  by  water-power. 

The  German  traveler,  Schoepf,  writing  in  1783  of  some 
Pennsylvania  furnaces  and  forges,  makes  the  following  men- 
tion of  Warwick  and  Reading  furnaces :  "  Warwick  furnace, 
19  miles  from  Reading,  near  Pottsgrove,  makes  the  most  iron, 
often  40  tons  a  week ;  the  iron  ore  lies  10  feet  under  the  sur- 
face. Reading  furnace,  not  far  from  the  former,  is  at  present 
fallen'  into  decay.  Here  the  smelting  would  formerly  often 
continue  from  12  to  18  months  at  a  stretch." 

At  first  large  leather  bellows  were  used  exclusively  to  blow 
both  the  forges  and  the  furnaces,  but  afterwards,  about  the 
time  of  the  Revolution,  wooden  cylinders,  or  "tubs,"  were  also 
used.  It  was  not  until  after  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century  that  steam-power  was  experimentally  used  to  produce 
the  blast  at  either  furnaces  or  forges  in  Pennsylvania,  or  in 
any  other  State.  Warwick  and  Cornwall  furnaces,  two  of 
the  be'st  furnaces  of  the  last  century,  retained  their  long 
leather  bellows  until  the  present  century.  Bishop  says  that 
Warwick  furnace  "  was  blown  by  long  wooden  bellows  pro- 
pelled by  water  wheels,  and  when  in  blast  made  25  or  30  tons 
of  iron  per  week."  Reading  furnace,  a  rival  of  both  War- 
wick and  Cornwall,  was  also  blown  with  leather  bellows.  The 
Cornwall  bellows  was  20  feet  7  inches  long,  5  feet  10  inches 
wide  across  the  breech,  and  14  inches  wide  at  the  insertion  of 
the  nozzle.  Only  one  tuyere  was  used.  The  fuel  used  was 
exclusively  charcoal,  and  the  blast  was  always  cold.  Schoepf 
says  that  about  400  bushels  of  charcoal  were  required  to  pro- 
duce from  the  ore  a  ton  of  hammered  bar  iron.  He  also  says 
that  mahogany  was  used  to  make  the  moulds  for  the  castings 
at  the  furnaces,  "because  it  warps  and  cracks  the  least." 

The  following  notice  of  the  workmen  employed  in  making 
iron  in  Pennsylvania  twenty  years  prior  to  the  Revolution, 


188  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

and  of  the  prices  of  iron  at  the  same  period,  is  taken  from 
Acrelius,  whose  valuable  history  was  printed  in  1759,  but 
covers  the  period  of  his  visit  from  1750  to  1756. 

The  workmen  are  partly  English  and  partly  Irish,  with  some  few  Ger- 
mans, though  the  work  is  carried  on  after  the  English  method.  The  pig- 
iron  is  smelted  into  "  geese,"  ("  goasar,")  and  is  cast  from  five  to  six  feet  long 
and  a  half  foot  broad,  for  convenience  of  forging,  which  is  in  the  Walloon 
style.  The  pigs  are  first  operated  upon  by  the  finers,  (smelters.)  Then  the 
chiffery,  or  hammer-men,  take  it  back  again  into  their  hands,  and  beat  out 
the  long  bars.  The  finers  are  paid  30s.  a  ton  and  the  hammer-men  23s.  9d. 
per  ton ;  that  is  to  say,  both  together,  £2  13s.  9d.  The  laborers  are  generally 
composed  partly  of  negroes,  (slaves,)  partly  of  servants  from  Germany  or 
Ireland  bought  for  a  term  of  years.  A  good  negro  is  bought  for  from  £30 
to  £40  sterling,  which  is  equal  to  1,500  or  2,000  of  our  dollars,  koppar  mynt. 
Their  clothing  may  amount  to  75  dollars,  koppar  mynt,  their  food,  325  ditto 
— very  little,  indeed,  for  the  year.  The  negroes  are  better  treated  in  Penn- 
sylvania than  anywhere  else  in  America.  A  white  servant  costs  350  dollars, 
koppar  mynt,  and  his  food  is  estimated  at  325  dollars  more,  of  the  same 
coinage.  For  four  months,  in  summer,  when  the  heat  is  most  oppressive, 
all  labor  is  suspended  at  the  furnaces  and  forges.  Pig-iron  is  sold  at  the  fur- 
naces for  from  £3  6s.  8d.  to  £3  10s.  per  ton.  Bar-iron  at  the  forge  brings  £20 
per  ton,  or  20s.  per  100  pounds.  It  is  sold  dear,  for  six  months  credit  is 
given.  Pig-iron  is  sold  in  Philadelphia  at  £5  per  ton;  bar-iron,  in  large 
quantities,  at  from  £14  to  £16  per  ton.  It  certainly  seems  remarkable  that 
the  price  is  diminished  after  the  long  transportation  to  the  city;  but  in 
this  people  find  their  profit. 

The  iron-works  of  Pennsylvania  lie  mostly  within  forty  miles  of  Phila- 
delphia. The  carriage  for  such  a  distance  does  not  exceed  twenty  shillings 
sterling  per  ton.  As  a  set-off  to  this  is  reckoned  the  return  freight  upon 
goods  serviceable  for  the  storehouse  of  the  works. 

The  sheriff's  advertisement  for  the  sale  of  Martic  furnace 
and  forge,  in  1769,  already  referred  to,  and  which  we  give 
below,  indicates  very  correctly  the  extent  and  character  of 
a  representative  Pennsylvania  iron  enterprise  before  the  Rev- 
olution. 

By  virtue  of  a  writ  to  me  directed,  will  be  exposed  to  sale,  by  public 
vendue,  on  the  30th  day  of  January  inst.,  at  10  o'clock  in  the  morning,  at 
Martick  Furnace,  in  Lancaster  county,  the  said  furnace  and  forge,  together 
with  upwards  of  3,400  acres  of  land,  thereunto  belonging.  The  improve- 
ments at  both  furnace  and  forge  are  very  good,  viz. :  At  the  furnace,  a  good 
dwelling-house,  stores,  and  compting-house,  a  large  coal-house,  with  eight 
dwelling-houses  for  the  labourers,  a  good  grist-mill,  Smith's  and  Carpenter's 
shops,  6  good  log  stables,  with  4  bays  for  hay,  a  number  of  pot  patterns,  and 
some  flasks  for  ditto,  stove  moulds,  &c.,  &c. ;  a  good  mine  bank,  abounding 
with  plenty  of  ore,  so  convenient  that  one  team  can  haul  three  loads  a  day ; 
about  15  acres  of  good  watered  meadow,  and  as  much  adjoining  may  be 

f 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  189 

made:  The  Forge  is  about  4  miles  distant,  now  in  good  order,  with  four 
fires,  two  hammers,  and  very  good  wooden  bellows,  a  dwelling-house,  store, 
and  compting-house,  with  six  dwelling-houses  for  the  labourers,  two  very 
good  coal-houses,  large  enough  to  contain  six  months'  stock,  three  stables, 
Smith's  and  Carpenter's  shops,  two  acres  of  meadow  made,  and  about  1,500 
cords  of  wood,  cut  in  the  woods  at  both  places ;  there  is  plenty  of  water  at 
said  works  in  the  driest  season,  and  they  are  situated  in  a  plentiful  part  of 
the  country,  where  they  can  be  supplied  with  necessaries  on  the  lowest 
terms :  And  to  be  sold  the  same  day,  a  very  good  plantation,  containing  200 
acres  of  patent  land,  clear  of  quitrent,  adjoining  the  lands  of  Benjamin 
Ashleman,  the  Widow  Haiman,  and  others,  in  Conestogo  township.  Also 
two  slaves,  one  a  Mulattoe  man,  a  good  forge  man,  the  other  a  Negro  man, 
and  three  teams  of  horses,  with  waggons  and  gears,  &c.  All  late  the  prop- 
erty of  Thomas  Smith,  James  Wallace,  and  James  Fulton ;  seized  and  taken 
in  execution,  and  to  be  sold  by  JAMES  WEBB,  Sheriff. 

Although  the  early  furnaces  and  forges  of  Pennsylvania 
were  subject  to  vicissitudes  which  sometimes  brought  them 
under  the  sheriff's  hammer  it  is  nevertheless  true  that  their 
owners  were  almost  feudal  lords,  to  whom  their  workmen  and 
their  workmen's  families  looked  for  counsel  and  guidance  in 
all  the  affairs  of  life  as  well  as  for  employment ;  whose  word 
was  law ;  who  often  literally  owned  their  black  laborers,  and 
to  whom  white  "  redemptioners  "  were  frequently  bound  for 
a  term  of  years  to  pay  the  cost  of  their  passage  across  the 
ocean ;  who  cultivated  farms  as  well  as  made  iron ;  who 
controlled  the  politics  and  largely  maintained  the  churches 
and  schools  of  their  several  neighborhoods;  who  were  cap- 
tains and  colonels  of  military  organizations ;  whose  wives  and 
daughters  were  grand  ladies  in  the  eyes  of  the  simple  peo- 
ple around  them ;  whose  dwellings  were  usually  substantial 
structures,  which  were  well  furnished  for  that  day  and  order- 
ed in  a  style  of  liberality  and  hospitality.  The  authority  ex- 
ercised by  these  old  Pennsylvania  ironmasters  was  indeed  ba- 
ronial, but  it  was  also  patriarchaLx  These  pioneers  were  not 
usually  hard  taskmasters ;  if  they  paid  only  low  wages  they 
frequently  made  only  small  profits  themselves ;  a  tie  of  com- 
mon interest,  stronger  than  exists  to-day  under  similar  rela- 
tions, bound  master  and  workmen  together.  Whether  the 
workmen  were  their  own  masters  or  not  they  were  virtually  . 
fixtures  of  the  furnace  or  the  forge.  The  ladies  of  the  "  big 
house  "  disdained  not  their  poorer  sisters,  but  were  often  their 
teachers,  often  tneir  nurses  and  physicians,  and  always  knew 


190  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

them  by  name  and  would  recognize  and  greet  them  with 
politeness.  If  daily  toil  was  the  common  heritage  of  the 
workmen  and  their*  families  it  may  be  said  that  their  wants 
were  few  and  their  aspirations  were  humble.  If  there  were 
bare  floors  in  the  little  log  houses  there  was  food  and  there 
was  warmth  within  their  walls.  The  state  of  society  *here 
briefly  described  was  not  free  from  the  dark  spots  which  vice, 
selfishness,  and  ignorance  give  to  society  every where^/but  in 
the  main  it  was  kindly,  satisfying,  and  uneventful.  The 
years  glided  on  with  little  change,  and  there  was  content  on 
every  hand.  Those  "good  old  colony  times,"  when  Pennsylva- 
nia was  still  a  British  province,  and  wrhen  George  the  Second 
or  George  the  Third  was  king,  are  gone,  and  their  mediaeval 
flavor,  their  picturesqueness,  and  their  placidity  are  also  gone. 
The  great  State  makes  iron  now  in  a  different  way. 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  191 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

THE    MANUFACTURE    OF   IRON    IN    PENNSYLVANIA 
AFTER  THE   REVOLUTION. 

AFTER  the  Revolution  the  business  of  manufacturing 
iron  received  a  fresh  impulse  in  the  eastern  part  of  Pennsyl- 
vania and  was  further  extended  into  the  interior.  Chester, 
Lancaster,  and  Berks  counties  shared  conspicuously  in  the 
development  at  this  period  of  the  leading  manufacturing 
industry  of  the  State.  Many  blast  furnaces  and  forges  and 
a  few  rolling  and  slitting  mills  were  built  in  these  counties 
before  1800,  and  after  the  beginning  of  the  present  century 
this  activity  continued.  A  few  of  the  earliest  iron  enterprises 
which  were  established  after  the  Revolution  in  these  and  in 
other  eastern  and  central  counties  will  be  mentioned,  begin- 
ning with  the  extreme  eastern  parts  of  the  State. 

The  first  iron  enterprises  in  the  Lehigh  valley,  which  is 
now  one  of  the  leading  iron  districts  of  the  country,  do  not 
appear  to  have  been  undertaken  until  after  the  beginning  of 
the  present  century.  A  bloomary  at  or  near  Jacobsburg,  in 
Northampton  county,  is  said  to  have  been  built  in  1805.  It 
was  in  operation  as  late  as  1849.  In  1808  William  Henry, 
of  Nazareth,  built  a  bloomary  in  Bushkill  township,  North- 
ampton county,  about  three  miles  north  of  Nazareth,  which 
was  started  in  1809,  making  its  first  bar  of  iron  on  the  9th  of 
March  in  that  year.  In  1824  Matthew  S.  Henry,  a  son  of 
William  Henry,  built  a  furnace  called  Catharine,  in  Bushkill 
township,  about  half  a  mile  from  his  father's  bloomary.  It 
made  its  first  ton  of  pig  iron  on  the  10th  of  May,  1825. 

Hampton  furnace,  near  Shimersville,  in  Lehigh  county, 
was  built  in  1809  by  David  Heimbach  and  two  partners 
named  Wisselman  and  Cobelly.  Mr.  Heimbach  soon  pur- 
chased the  interest  of  his  partners  and  continued  to  operate 
the  furnace  until  1830,  after  which  year  it  was  owned  and 
operated  by  various  persons.  It  was  in  blast  as  late  as  1857. 
In  1820  David  Heimbach  and  his  son  David  built  Claris- 
sa forge,  on  Aquashicola  creek,  in  Carbon  county.  In  1827 


192  THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 

David  Heimbach  the  younger  built  Clarissa  furnace  at  the 
same  place,  which  he  operated  until  his  death  in  1834.  In 
1837  the  furnace  and  forge  were  both  purchased  by  Joseph 
J.  Albright,  Samuel  P.  Templeton,  and  Jacob  Rice,  by  whom 
their  name  was  changed  to  the  Ashland  iron  works.  In  1841 
the  furnace  and  forge  were  both  swept  away  by  a  freshet. 
The  furnace  was  not  rebuilt,  but  the  forge  was  rebuilt,  burn- 
ed down,  again  rebuilt,  and  finally  abandoned  about  1860. 
On  April  14,  1826,  David  Heimbach  the  elder  purchased  129 
acres  of  land  on  Pocopoco  creek,  near  Weissport,  in  Carbon 
county,  and  on  this  tract  he  built  in  1827  a  furnace  and 
forge,  which  he  called  New  Hampton.  The  name  of  this 
furnace  and  forge  was  changed  to  Maria  in  1836  by  William 
Miller,  who  purchased  them  in  that  year.  The  furnace  was 
finally  blown  out  in  1859.  All  these  were  charcoal  enterprises. 

In  1826  Stephen  Balliet  and  Samuel  Helfrick  built  Le- 
high  furnace,  on  Trout  creek,  at  the  foot  of  the  Kittatinny 
mountains,  in  Heidelberg  (now  Washington)  township,  in 
Lehigh  county.  It  was  a  small  furnace,  30  feet  high  and  7 
feet  wide  at  the  boshes.  The  furnace  was  operated  by  this 
firm  until  the  death  of  Mr.  Helfrick  in  1830.  In  1832  Mr. 
Balliet  became  its  sole  owner.  He  continued  to  operate  the 
furnace  until  his  death  in  1854.  It  has  since  been  abandoned. 
In  1828  Mr.  Balliet  and  Mr.  Helfrick  built  Penn  forge,  'in 
East  Penn  township,  Carbon  county,  which  was  also  jointly 
operated  by  them  until  the  death  of  Mr.  Helfrick,  and  sub- 
sequently by  Mr.  Balliet  until  his  death.  In  1837  Mr.  Balliet 
built  Penn  furnace,  near  the  forge.  About  1858  this  furnace 
was  purchased  by  John  Balliet,  a  son  of  Stephen  Balliet,  by 
whom  it  was  owned  and  operated  until  1886,  when  it  was 
abandoned  after  the  death  of  its  owner  in  that  year.  It  had 
long  been  called  East  Penn  furnace.  It  was  the  last  charcoal 
furnace  in  operation  in  the  Lehigh  valley. 

In  the  collection  of  the  foregoing  details  concerning  the 
enterprises  of  the  Heimbachs  and  Stephen  Balliet  and  Sam- 
uel Helfrick  we  have  had  the  assistance  of  Mr.  Hungerford. 

In  1836  a  small  rolling  mill  was  built  at  South  Easton, 
in  Northampton  county,  by  John  Stewart  and  others.  This 
was  probably  the  first  rolling  mill  in  the  Lehigh  valley.  John 
Stewart  died  at  Easton 'on  April  13,  1885,  in  his  89th  year. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  193 

Two  charcoal  bloomaries  were  built  in  Carbon  county 
after  the  beginning  of  the  anthracite  era — Anthony's,  near 
Lehigh  Gap,  in  1843,  and  Pine  Run,  near  Lehighton,  in  1848. 
A  bloomary  forge  called  Analomink  was  built  near  Strouds- 
burg,  in  Monroe  county,  in  1829.  In  1843  Day  styled  it  a 
"  large  forge."  All  the  forges  and  ore  bloomaries  in  the  Le- 
high valley  have  been  abandoned.  All  the  bloomaries,  six  in 
number,  were  supplied  with  ore  from  Northern  New  Jersey. 

The  Cheltenham  rolling  mill,  on  Tacony  creek,  in  Mont- 
gomery county,  one  mile  below  Shoemakertown,  was  built 
in  1790,  probably  by  James  and  Maxwell  Rowland.  In  1849 
and  subsequently  it  was  operated  by  Rowland  &  Hunt,  mak- 
ing boiler  plates  from  blooms.  It  was  abandoned  in  1858. 
At  first  it  was  used  to  slit  nail  rods.  The  firm  of  Rowland 
&  Hunt  was  composed  of  Mrs.  Harriet  M.  Rowland,  a  widow, 
and  Mr.  Alfred  Hunt,  Mrs.  Rowland  owning  the  mill. 

Alfred  Hunt,  who  had  been  the  president  of  the  Bethle- 
hem  Iron  Company  from  its  organization  in  1860,  died  on 
March  27,  1888,  at  the  residence  of  his  brother,  Mordecai 
Hunt,  at  Moorestown,  New  Jersey.  Mr.  Hunt  was  born  of 
Quaker  parentage,  at  Brownsville,  Pa.,  on  April  5,  1817.  He 
was  buried  at  Moorestown  on  March  31st. 

In  1790  Benjamin  Longstreth  erected  a  rolling  and  slit- 
ting mill  at  Phoenixville  in  Chester  county,  where  the  found- 
ry now  stands.  This  was  the  beginning  of  the  present  exten- 
sive works  of  the  Phoenix  Iron  Company. 

Clemens  Rentgen,  a  native  of  the  Palatinate,  in  Germany, 
emigrated  in  1791  from  the  town  of  Zweibriicken,  in  Bava- 
ria, to  Kimberton,  in  Chester  county,  about  six  miles  from 
Phoenix  ville,  where  he  purchased  a  forge  on  French  creek. 
At  Knauertown  he  unsuccessfully  undertook  to  manufacture 
steel.  His  forge  was  continued,  and  to  it  he  added  a  small 
rolling  mill.  His  various  enterprises  were  known  as  the 
Pikeland  works,  Pikeland  being  the  name  of  the  township 
in  which  they  were  situated. 

On  November  17,  1796,  Mr.  Rentgen  obtained  a  patent  for 
an  invention  for  "forging  bolts  or  round  iron"  by  a  machine 
which  he  described  in  the  following  words  :  "  This  machine 
consists  of  a  strong  platform,  of  a  given  size,  in  which  are 
fixed  two  upright  posts.  In  these  posts  is  fixed  an  axle  go- 


194  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

ing  through  the  handle  of  a  concave  hammer  or  sledge,  at 
the  extreme  end  of  which  is  fixed  a  cog-wheel,  whose  cogs, 
operating  on  the  lever  or  handle  of  the  said  concave  ham- 
mer or  sledge,  cause  it  to  operate  upon  a  concave  anvil  upon 
which  the  iron  to  be  wrought  is  placed.  The  concavity  of 
this  anvil  is  about  one-eighth  of  the  dimensions  of  that  of 
the  said  hammer  or  sledge.  This  machine  is  set  in  motion 
by  water  or  any  other  adequate  power,  by  wheels  operating 
upon  the  said  cog-wheel." 

On  June  27,  1810,  Mr.  Rentgen  obtained  a  patent  for 
"rolling  iron  round,  for  ship  bolts  and  other  uses,"  by  the 
following  method:  "This  machine  consists  of  two  large  iron 
rollers,  fixed  in  a  strong  frame.  Each  roller  has  concavities 
turned  in  them,  meeting  each  other  to  form  perfect  round 
holes,  of  from  half  inch  to  one  and  three-quarter  inches  or 
any  other  size  in  diameter,  through  which  rollers  the  iron  is 
drawn  from  the  mouth  of  the  furnace  with  great  dispatch, 
and  the  iron  is  then  manufactured  better  and  more  even  than 
it  is  possible  to  forge  it  out.  The  force  applied  to  the  end 
of  these  rollers  is  like  that  applied  to  mills." 

The  original  patents  granted  to  Mr.  Rentgen  have  been 
shown  to  us  by  his  descendant,  Mr.  William  H.  Wahl,  of 
Philadelphia.  We  learn  from  this  gentleman  that  Mr.  Rent- 
gen  made  some  use  of  his  patent  anvil  and  hammer,  and 
that,  before  obtaining  the  patent  in  1810  for  his  method 
of  rolling  round  iron,  he  built  an  experimental  set  of  rolls, 
which  were  replaced  after  the  patent  was  granted  by  a  per- 
manent set,  with  which  he  rolled  round  iron  as  early  as  1812 
or  1813,  some  of  which  was  for  the  Navy  Department  of  the 
United  States  Government.  We  do  not  learn  that  he  ever 
rolled  bar  iron,  and  it  is  not  claimed  that  he  used  puddling 
furnaces.  The  fact  that  a  patent  was  granted  to  him  as  late 
as  June  27,  1810,  for  a  machine  to  roll  iron  in  round  shapes 
would  seem  to  furnish  conclusive  proof  that  Cort's  rolls  had 
not  then  been  introduced  into  the  United  States. 

In  1798  there  were  six  furnaces  and  six  forges  in  Berks 
county ;  in  1806  there  were  eight  furnaces,  twenty  forges,  and 
one  slitting  mill ;  and  in  1830  there  were  eleven  furnaces  and 
twenty-four  forges. 

Schuylkill  county  has  had  many  forges,  the  earliest  of 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  195 

which,  near  Port  Clinton,  appears  to  have  been  built  in  1801. 
Before  1806  a  small  charcoal  furnace  was  built  by  Reese  & 
Thomas  at  Schuylkill  Gap,  near  Pottsville.  About  that  year 
it  was  purchased  by  John  Pott,  the  founder  of  Pottsville,  who 
tore  it  down  and  in  1807  erected  Greenwood  furnace  and 
forge.  In  1832  there  were  in  operation  in  Schuylkill  county 
Greenwood  furnace  and  forge  and  Schuylkill,  Brunswick,  Pine 
Grove,  Mahanoy,  and  Swatara  forges.  Swatara  furnace,  six 
miles  from  Pine  Grove,  and  Stanhope  furnace,  still  nearer  to 
Pine.  Grove,  were  built  between  1830  and  1840.  About  1840 
Jefferson  furnace,  at  Schuylkill  Haven,  was  built.  All  these 
early  enterprises  in  Schuylkill  county  have  been  abandoned. 

In  1805  there  were  seven  forges  and  one  slitting  mill  in 
Delaware  county.  Franklin  rolling  mill,  at  Chester,  in  this 
county,  was  built  in  1808.  In  1828  there  were  in  Delaware 
county  five  rolling  and  slitting  mills  and  several  manufacto- 
ries of  finished  iron  products. 

Federal  slitting  mill,  on  Buck  run,  about  four  miles  south 
of  Coatesville,  in  East  Fallowfield  township,  Chester  county, 
was  built  in  1795  by  Isaac  Pennock.  The  name  of  this  mill 
was  afterwards  changed  to  Rokeby  rolling  mill.  It  was  used 
/to  roll  sheet  iron  and  nail  plates  and  to  slit  the  latter  into 
nail  rods.  It  continued  in  operation  until  1864,  when  it  was 
burned  down  and  abandoned.  During  the  latter  part  of  its 
history  it  rolled  boiler  plates.  A  paper  mill  now  occupies 
its  exact  site.  About  1810  Mr.  Pennock  built  Brandywine 
rolling  mill  at  Coatesville,  which  was  purchased  from  him 
about  1816  by  Dr.  Charles  Lukens,  who  had  been  employed 
at  the  Federal  slitting  mill.  It  is  claimed  that  the  first  boiler 
plates  made  in  the  United  States  were  rolled  at  this  mill  by 
Dr.  Lukens.  The  puddling  mill  of  the  Lukens  rolling  mill 
at  Coatesville  now  occupies  the  site  of  the  Brandywine  mill. 
In  1825,  upon  the  death  of  Dr.  Lukens,  who  had  become  the 
owner  of  the  Brandywine  mill,  the  management  of  the  mill 
devolved  upon  his  wife,  Rebecca  W.  Lukens,  by  whom  the 
business  was  greatly  extended  and  profitably  conducted  for 
twenty  years.  After  her  death  the  name  of  the  works  was 
changed  to  Lukens  rolling  mill  as  a  tribute  to  her  memory. 

Mount  Hope  furnace,  located  on  Big  Chiquisalunga  creek, 
in  Lancaster  county,  about  ten  miles  south  of  Lebanon,  was 


196  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

built  in  1785  by  Peter  Grubb,  Jr.,  and  it  is  still  owned  by 
members  of  the  Grubb  family.  Colebrook  furnace,  on  the 
Conewago,  in  Lebanon  county,  seven  miles  southwest  of 
Cornwall  furnace,  was  built  by  Robert  Coleman  in  1791  and 
abandoned  about  1860.  Mount  Vernon  furnace,  on  the  same 
stream,  about  twenty-three  miles  west  of  Lancaster,  and  in 
Lancaster  county,  was  built  in  1808  by  Henry  Bates  Grubb. 
A  second  furnace  of  the  same  name  was  built  near  the  first 
in  1831.  Between  the  building  of  the  first  furnace  and  the 
second  a  forge  was  built.  All  have  been  abandoned.  Con- 
owingo  furnace,  on  the  creek  of  the  same  name,  and  about 
sixteen  miles  southeast  of  Lancaster,  was  built  in  1809.  About 
1840  steam-power  for  driving  the  blast  was  successfully  in- 
troduced by  its  owner,  James  M.  Hopkins,  the  boilers  being 
placed  at  the  tunnel-head.  Soon  after  the  introduction  of 
steam  at  Conowingo  furnace  it'  was  successfully  applied  to 
Cornwall  furnace  by  the  manager,  Samuel  M.  Reynolds. 

In  1786  there  were  seventeen  furnaces,  forges,  and  slitting 
mills  within  a  radius  of  thirty-nine  miles  of  Lancaster.  In 
1838  there  were  102  furnaces,  forges,  and  rolling  mills  within 
a  radius  of  fifty-two  miles  of  Lancaster.  At  this  time  Lan- 
caster was  the  great  iron  centre  of  Eastern  Pennsylvania. 

In  1805  there  were  two  forges  in  York  county,  one  of  which 
was  Spring  forge  and  the  other  was  Codorus  forge.  Castle 
Fin  forge,  at  first  called  Palmyra  forge,  on  Muddy  creek,  in 
York  county,  was  built  in  1810  by  Joseph  Webb  and  rebuilt 
in  1827  by  Thomas  Burd  Coleman,  who  also  added  a  blister 
steel  furnace  about  1832.  Both  have  been  abandoned.  In  its 
day  Castle  Fin  forge  was  a  very  prominent  enterprise.  In 
1850  there  were  five  furnaces  and  three  forges  in  this  county. 
Since  then  its  iron  industry  has  sensibly'  declined. 

Major  Samuel  M.  Reynolds  died  in  Philadelphia  on  May 
29,  1888.  He  was  born  at  Lancaster  on  April  17,  1814. 
His  younger  brothers  were  Admiral  William  Reynolds,  of 
the  United  States  navy ;  General  John  F.  Reynolds,  who  fell 
at  Gettysburg  on  July  1,  1863 ;  and  General  James  L.  Rey- 
nolds, a  lawyer  of  Lancaster.  Samuel  M.  Reynolds  was  for 
many  years  manager  of  Castle  Fin  forge  and  farm,  was  also 
for  several  years  manager  of  Cornwall  furnace,  and  was  at 
one  time  part  owner  of  a  charcoal  furnace  in  Clarion  county. 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  197 

He  was  a  paymaster  in  the  United  States  army  during  the 
Rebellion.  He  was  buried  at  Lancaster. 

In  1826  Maria  furnace  was  built  in  Hamiltonban  town- 
ship, Adams  county,  by  James  D.  Paxton  &  Co.,  the  firm  con- 
sisting of  James  D.  Paxton,  Thaddeus  Stevens,  (the  "  great 
commoner,")  John  B.  McPherson,  and  Thomas  C.  Miller. 
In  1828  the  last  two  members  of  the  firm  retired.  Hon.  Ed- 
ward McPherson,  of  Gettysburg,  writes  us  as  follows  concern- 
ing this  furnace,  which  continued  to  be  operated  by  the  re- 
maining members  of  the  original  firm :  "  The  Maria  furnace 
was  worked,  in  all,  about  twelve  years — from  1826  to  1838. 
The  first  effort  was  to  make  stoves ;  but  the  ores  produced 
plates  which  were  so  often  brittle  that  the  business  proved 
precarious  and  unremunerative.  The  new  owners,  in  an  ef- 
fort to  make  other  use  of  the  Maria  furnace  iron,  bought  in 
1830  the  Caledonia  property  near  Fayetteville,  and  built  a 
forge.  They  ran  this  till  1833,  when  it  was  burned  on  the 
night  of  the  'falling  stars.'  They  promptly  rebuilt  the  forge, 
and  in  1837  built  the  furnace  at  Caledonia,  in  evident  prep- 
aration for  the  abandonment  of  the  original  works  in  Adams 
county,  which  took  place  in  1838.  This  transfer  was  from 
an  inferior  ore  bank  to  a  very  superior  ore  bank,  but  in  nei- 
ther place  was  money  made  in  amounts  worth  considering." 
Chestnut  Grove  furnace,  at  Idaville,  in  Adams  county,  was 
built  in  1830  and  is  still  active. 

The  first  furnace  in  Franklin  county  was  Mount  Pleasant, 
in  Path  valley,  about  three  miles  north  of  Loudon,  which 
was  built  in  1783  by  three  brothers,  William,  Benjamin,  and 
George  Chambers.  A  forge  was  also  erected  by  them  about 
the  same  time.  The  furnace  was  abandoned  in  1834  and  the 
forge  in.  1843.  A  furnace  called  Richmond,  built  in  1865, 
now  occupies  the  site  of  Mount  Pleasant  furnace.  Sound- 
well  forge,  on  Conodoguinet  creek,  at  Roxbury,  sixteen  miles 
north  of  Chambersburg,  was  built  in  1798  by  Leephar,  Crot- 
zer  &  Co.,  and  was  active  as  late  as  1857.  Roxbury  furnace, 
at  or  near  the  same  place,  was  built  in  1815  by  Samuel  Cole, 
and  is  now  abandoned.  Carrick  forge,  four  miles  from  Fan- 
nettsburg,  was  built  in  1800,  and  was  in  operation  as  late 
as  1856.  Carrick  furnace,  which  has  been  idle  since  1884, 
was  built  in  1828  by  General  Samuel  Dunn  and  Thomas  G. 


198  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

McCulloh.  London  furnace  and  forge  were  built  about  1790 
by  Colonel  James  Chambers  and  abandoned  about  1840. 
Valley  forge,  near  Loudon,  in  this  county,  was  built  in  1804. 
A  furnace  of  the  same  name  was  built  near  the  forge  at  a 
later  day.  Both  have  been  abandoned.  Mont  Alto  furnace, 
in  the  same  county,  was  built  in  1807  by  Daniel  and  Samuel 
Hughes  and  is  still  active.  Two  forges  of  the  same  name, 
about  four  miles  from  the  furnace,  were  built  in  1809  and 
1810,  and  were  abandoned  in  1866.  A  foundry  was  built  in 
1815,  a  rolling  mill  in  1832,  and  a  nail  factory  in  1835.  In 
1850  the  nail  factory  was  burned  down,  and  in  1867  the 
rolling  mill  was  abandoned.  The  foundry  and  a  new  steam 
forge  close  to  the  furnace  are  still  active. 

Caledonia  forge,  in  Franklin  county,  on  Conococheague 
creek,  ten  miles  southeast  of  Chambersburg,  built  in  1830  by 
Stevens  &  Paxton,  and  Caledonia  furnace,  at  the  same  place, 
built  in  1837  by  the  same  firm,  have  already  been  noticed 
in  connection  with  Adams  county.  For  many  years  before 
1863  this  furnace  and  forge  were  owned  by  Thaddeus  Ste- 
vens, in  which  year  they  were  burned  by  the  Confederates  un- 
der General  Lee  when  on  their  march  to  Gettysburg.  Frank- 
lin furnace,  in  St.  Thomas  township,  was  built  by  Peter  and 
George  Housum  in  1828,  was  still  running  with  charcoal  in 
1882,  and  has  since  been  idle.  There  were  a  few  other  pio- 
neer charcoal  furnaces  and  forges  in  this  county.  Early  in 
the  present  century  nails  and  edge  tools  were  made  in  large 
quantities  at  several  establishments  at  Chambersburg  and  in 
its  vicinity.  One  of  these,  the  Conococheague  rolling  mill 
and  nail  factory,  was  built  by  Brown  &  Watson  in  1814. 
Two  furnaces  called  Southampton,  not  far  from  Shippens- 
burg,  but  in  Franklin  county,  were  built  about  1830  and  torn 
down  in  1854.  A  forge  near  them  was  torn  down  in  1849. 

Liberty  forge,  at  Lisburn,  on  Yellow  Breeches  creek,  in 
Cumberland  county,  was  built  in  1790  and  abandoned  in 
1888.  An  older  forge,  long  abandoned,  is  said  to  have  been 
built  at  Lisburn  in  1783.  A  few  other  forges  in  this  county 
were  built  prior  to  1800.  Cumberland  furnace,  ten  miles 
southwest  of  Carlisle,  on  Yellow  Breeches  creek,  is  said  to 
have  been  built  in  1794  by  Michael  Ege.  It  blew  out  per- 
manently in  1854.  Two  furnaces,  now  abandoned,  once  stood 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  199 

near  Shippensburg — Augusta,  built  in  1824,  and  Mary  Ann, 
built  in  1826.  Big  Pond  furnace,  built  in  1836,  between  Au- 
gusta and  Mary  Ann  furnaces,  was  burned  down  in  1880. 

About  1806  Jacob  M.  Haldeman  removed  from  Lancaster 
county  to  New  Cumberland,  at  the  mouth  of  Yellow  Breeches 
creek,  on  the  Susquehanna.  He  purchased  a  forge  at  this 
place  and  added  a  rolling  and  slitting  mill,  which  'were  op- 
erated until  about  1826,  when  they  were  abandoned.  Fair- 
view  rolling  mill,  about  a  mile  from  the  mouth  of  Conodo- 
guinet  creek,  in  Cumberland  county,  and  two  miles  above 
Harrisburg,  was  built  in  1833  by  Gabriel  Heister  and  Nor- 
man Callender,  of  Harrisburg,  to  roll  bar  iron.  Jared  Pratt, 
of  Massachusetts,  leased  it  in  1836  and  added  a  nail  factory. 

The  Haldeman  family  has  been  prominent  in  the  manu- 
facture of  iron  in  Pennsylvania  during  the  whole  of  the 
present  century.  A  sketch  of  the  family  is  herewith  given. 

Jacob  Haldeman,  the  grandfather  of  Jacob  M.  Haldeman,  was  born  Oc- 
tober 7, 1722,  in  the  canton  of  Neufchatel,  Switzerland,  and  died  December 
31,  1784,  in  Rapho  township,  Lancaster  county,  Pennsylvania.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety  at  the  breaking  out  of  the  Rev- 
olution. John  Haldeman,  son  of  Jacob,  was  born  in  1753,  and  married 
Maria  Breneman,  and  they  became  the  parents  of  Jacob  M.  Haldeman,  who 
was  born  in  Manheim  township,  Lancaster  county,  on  March  4,  1781.  John 
Haldeman  was  one  of  the  boldest  and  most  successful  business  men  in  the 
State.  About  1806,  assisted  by  his  father  to  the  extent  of  some  $30,000, 
Jacob  M.  purchased  the  water  power  and  forge  at  the  mouth  of  Yellow 
Breeches  creek,  Cumberland  county,  and  established  himself  in  the  iron 
business.  In  six  years  he  had  paid  back  the  $30,000  borrowed  from  his 
father.  In  1810  he  married  Elizabeth  E.  Jacobs,  who  was  born  at  Mount 
Hope  furnace,  Lancaster  county,  on  June  13, 1789.  In  1830  he  removed  to 
Harrisburg,  where  he  died  on  December  15,  1857,  aged  76  years,  9  months, 
and  11  days.  His  wife  died  at  the  same  place  on  March  18,  1884,  aged  94 
years,  9  months,  and  5  days. 

In  1836  Mr.  Haldeman  owned  one-third  of  the  Mary  Ann  and  Augusta 
furnaces,  near  Carlisle,  the  Carlisle  bank  owning  the  other  two-thirds.  He 
was  one  of  the  incorporators  of  the  Chestnut  Hill  Iron  Ore  Company,  of 
Columbia,  in  1851.  Mr.  Haldeman's  son,  Jacob  S.,  was  United  States  Min- 
ister to  Sweden  in  1862,  and  another  son,  Richard,  who  married  a  daughter 
of  General  Simon  Cameron,  wras  for  several  years  a  member  of  Congress. 

Jacob  M.  Haldeman's  younger  brother,  Henry,  built  in  1846,  for  his 
sons,  the  late  Dr.  E.  Haldeman  and  Professor  S.  S.  Haldeman,  a  blast  fur- 
nace at  Chickies,  to  use  anthracite  coal,  now  known  as  "  Chickies  No.  1," 
and  operated  by  the  Chickies*  Iron  Company.  But  little  of  the  original 
structure  .now  remains.  Paris  Haldeman,  president  of  the  Chickies  Iron 
Company,  is  the  youngest  son  of  Henry  Haldeman. 


200  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Michael  Ege,  a  brother  of  George  Ege,  already  mention- 
ed, was  for  many  years  the  most  prominent  ironmaster  in  the 
Cumberland  valley,  owning,  a  short  time  before  his  death, 
Pine  Grove  furnace,  the  Carlisle  iron  works,  Holly  furnace, 
and  Cumberland  furnace.  He  died  on  August  31,  1815. 

In  1840  there  were  eight  furnaces  and  eleven  forges 
and  rolling  mills  in  Franklin  county,  and  six  furnaces  and 
five  forges  and  rolling  mills  in  Cumberland  county. 

In  1785  Henry  Fulton  established  a  "  nailery  "  in  Dau- 
phin county,  probably  at  Harrisburg.  It  is  said  to  have  been 
"  only  a  little  remote  from  a  smithy."  In  1805  there  were  two 
furnaces  and  two  forges  in  this  county.  Oakdale  forge,  at 
Elizabethville,  appears  to  have  been  built  in  1830.  Victoria 
furnace,  on  Clark's  creek,  was  probably  built  in  that  year.  In 
1832  there  were  three  forges  and  two  furnaces  in  the  county. 
Emeline  furnace,  at  Dauphin,  was  built  about  1835.  The 
first  furnace  at  Middletown  in  this  county  was  built  in  1833, 
and  the  second  .furnace  was  built  in  1849 — both  charcoal  fur- 
naces. Manada  furnace,  at  West  Hanover,  was  built  in  1837 
by  E.  B.  &  C.  B.  Grubb.  The  first  rolling  mill  in  the  county 
was  the  Harrisburg  rolling  mill,  at  Harrisburg,  built  in  1836. 
The  Pennsylvania  steel  works  were  commenced  in  1865. 

The  manufacture  of  iron  had  a  very  early  beginning  in 
the  Susquehanna  valley  north  of  Harrisburg.  About  1778  a 
bloomary  forge  was  built  on  Nanticoke  creek,  near  the  low- 
er end  of  Wyoming  valley,  in  Luzerne  county,  by  John  and 
Mason  F.  Alden.  Another  bloomary  forge  was  built  in  1789 
on  the  Lackawanna  river,  about  two  miles  above  its  mouth, 
by  Dr.  William  Hooker  Smith  and  James  Sutton.  Still  an- 
other bloomary  forge  was  built  in  1799  or  1800,  on  Roaring 
brook,  at  Scranton,  then  known  as  Slocum's  Hollow,  by  two 
brothers,  Ebenezer  and  Benjamin  Slocum.  All  these  bloom- 
aries  continued  in  operation  until  about  1828.  Their  prod- 
ucts were  taken  down  the  Susquehanna  in  Durham  boats. 

Lackawanna  county  owes  its  present  prominence  in  the 
iron  industry  mainly  to  the  courage,  energy,  and  business 
sagacity  of  two  brothers,  George  W.  and  Selden  T.  Scranton, 
and  their  cousin,  Joseph  H.  Scranton,  the  two  brothers  com- 
mencing operations  in  1840  at  Scranton  and  their  cousin 
joining  them  soon  afterwards,  their  various  enterprises  cul- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  201 

minating  in  the  organization  of  the  Lackawanna  Iron  and 
Coal  Company.  The  Lackawanna  steel  works,  at  Scranton, 
were  completed  in  1875,  and  the  Scranton  steel  works  went 
into  operation  in  1883. 

Esther  furnace,  about  three  miles  south  of  Catawissa,  on 
East  Roaring  creek,  in  Columbia  county,  was  built  in  1802 
by  Michael  Bitter  &  Son,  who  "  cast  many  stoves."  In  1836 
it  was  rebuilt  by  Trago  &  Thomas.  In  1811  Francis  Mc- 
Shane  established  a  small  cut-nail  factory  at  Will^esbarre 
"  and  used  anthracite  coal  in  smelting  the  iron."  Catawissa 
furnace,  near  Mainville,  in  Columbia  county,  was  built  in 
1815,  and  in  1824  a  forge  was  built  near  the  same  place. 
The  furnace  has  long  been  abandoned,  and  the  forge,  called 
Mainville  forge,  which  has  in  late  years  been  employed  in 
producing  blooms  for  boiler  plates,  has  also  been  abandoned. 

A  furnace  was  built  in  Lycoming  county  in  1820,  four 
miles  from  Jersey  Shore,  and  named  Pine  Creek  furnace.  In 
1832  it  was  owned  by  Kirk,  Kelton  &  Co.  A  forge  was  added 
to  this  furnace  in  1831.  Heshbon  forge,  on  Lycoming  creek, 
five  miles  above  its  mouth,  was  built  in  1828  and  was  soon 
followed  by  other  iron  enterprises  on  the  same  stream.  Wash- 
ington furnace,  at  Lamar,  on  Fishing  creek,  in  Clinton  coun- 
ty, was  built  in  1810  by  John  Dunlop,  who  added  a  forge  in 
1812.  He  was  killed  in  a  mine  in  1815.  In  1812  Nathan 
Harvey  built  a  forge  at  Mill  Hall,  in  Clinton  county,  to  which 
a  furnace  was  afterwards  added.  A  furnace  at  Farrandsville, 
near  the  mouth  of  Lick  run,  in  this  county,  which  was  built 
about  1834  to  use  coke,  is  said  to  have  sunk,  in  connection 
with  a  nail  mill,  foundry,  and  other  enterprises,  over  half  a 
million  dollars  contributed  by  Boston  capitalists.  The  fur- 
nace was  abandoned  a  few  years  after  its  erection. 

In  1814  Peter  Karthaus,  a  native  of  Hamburg,  in  Ger- 
many, but  afterwards  a  merchant  of  Baltimore,  and  Rev. 
Frederick  W.  Geissenhainer,  a  native  of  Muhlberg,  in  Sax- 
ony, built  a  blast  furnace  at  the  mouth  of  the  Little  Mo- 
shannon,  or  Mosquito  creek,  in  the  lower  end  of  Clearfield 
county.  The  firm  of  Karthaus  &  Geissenhainer  was  dissolv- 
ed on  December  18,  1818.  It  had  been  organized  in  1811 
partly  to  mine  and  ship  to  eastern  markets  the  bituminous 
coal  of  Clearfield  county.  The  furnace  was  operated  with 


202  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

partial  success  with  charcoal  for  several  years.    We  shall  re- 
fer to  Dr.  Geissenhainer  in  a  subsequent  chapter. 

The  foregoing  summary  of  early  iron  enterprises  in  the 
Susquehanna  valley  could  be  very  much  extended  by  includ- 
ing other  charcoal  furnaces  and  forges  and  several  rolling 
mills  which  were  erected  about  1820  and  subsequently  in  the 
counties  of  Lackawanna,  Luzerne,  Columbia,  Montour,  Nor- 
thumberland, Union,  Snyder,  Lycoming,  and  Clinton,  most 
of  whic,h  have  been  abandoned,  but  this  is  not  necessary. 
Our  object  in  this  chapter  has  been  simply  to  preserve  the 
names,  location,  and  date  of  erection  of  the  earliest  charcoal 
iron  enterprises  which  were  established  in  Eastern  and  Cen-. 
tral  Pennsylvania  outside  of  the  Juniata  valley  after  the 
Revolution.  Juniata  valley  will  occupy  the  next  chapter. 

We  may  properly  close  this  'chapter  by  giving  some  in- 
formation concerning  the  primitive  method  of  transporting 
i»on  and  other  articles  by  pack-horses  from  Cumberland  and 
Franklin  counties  to  the  headwaters  of  the  Ohio  river  at  the 
close  of  the  last  century  and  after  the  beginning  of  the  pres- 
ent century,  when  wagon  roads  were  rare  in  Central  and  West- 
ern Pennsylvania.  The  following  account  is  taken  from  I.  D. 
Rupp's  History  of  Cumberland  County,  published  in  1848. 

Sixty  or  seventy  years  ago  500  pack-horses  had  been  at  one  time  in 
Carlisle,  going  thence  to  Shippensburg,  Fort  Loudon,  and  further  west- 
ward, loaded  with  merchandise,  also  salt,  iron,  etc.  The  pack-horses  used 
to  carry  bars  of  iron  on  their  backs,  crooked  over  and  around  their  bodies ; 
barrels  or  kegs  were  hung  on  each  side  of  these.  Colonel  Snyder,  of  Cham- 
bersburg,  in  a  conversation  with  the  writer  in  August,  1845,  said  that  he 
cleared  many  a  day  from  $6  to  $8  in  crooking  or  bending  iron  and  shoeing 
horses  for  Western  carriers  at  the  time  he  was  carrying  on  a  blacksmith 
shop  in  the  town  of  Chambersburg.  The  pack-horses  were  generally  led  in 
divisions  of  12  or  15  horses,  carrying  about  two  hundred-weight  each,  all 
going  single  file  and  being  managed  by  two  men,  one  going  before  as  the 
leader  and  the  other  at  the  tail  to  see  after  the  safety  of  the  packs.  Where 
the  bridle  road  passed  along  declivities  or  over  hills  the  path  was  in  some 
places  washed  out  so  deep  that  the  packs  or  burdens  came  in  contact  with 
the  ground  or  other  impeding  obstacles,  and  were  frequently  displaced. 
However,  as  the  carriers  usually  traveled  in  companies,  the  packs  were  soon 
adjusted  and  no  great  delay  occasioned.  The  pack-horses  were  generally 
furnished  with  bells,  which  wrere  kept  from  ringing  during  the  day  drive, 
but  were  let  loose  at  night  when  the  horses  were  set  free  and  permitted  to 
feed  and  browse.  The  bells  were  intended  as  guides  to  direct  their  where- 
abouts in  the  morning.  When  wagons  were  first  introduced  the  carriers 
considered  that  mode  of  transportation  an  invasion  of  their  rights. 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  203 

Day,  in  his  Historical  Collections,  says  that  "  Mercersburg, 
in  Franklin  county,  was  in  early  days  an  important  point  for 
trade  with  Indians  and  settlers  on  the  Western  frontier.  It 
was  no  uncommon  event  to  see  there  50  or  100  pack-horses  in 
a  row,  taking  on  their  loads  of  salt,  iron,  and  other  commod- 
ities for  the  Monongahela  country."  In  1789  the  crank  for 
the  first  saw-mill  built  in  Ohio  was  carried  by  pack-horses 
over  the  mountains  to  the  Youghiogheny  river,  and  thence 
sent  by  water  to  its  destination  on  Wolf  creek,  sixteen  miles 
from  Marietta.  It  weighed  180  pounds,  and  was  made  in 
New  Haven,  Connecticut,  for  the  New  England  Ohio  Com- 
pany. 


204  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

THE  MANUFACTUKE  OF  CHARCOAL  IRON  IN  THE 
JUNIATA  VALLEY. 

As  EARLY  as  1767  a  company  called  The  Juniata  Iron 
Company  was  organized,  doubtless  by  capitalists  of  Eastern 
Pennsylvania,  to  search  for  iron  ore  in  the  Juniata  valley, 
and  probably  with  the  ulterior  object  of  manufacturing  iron. 
Joseph  Jacobs  was  the  promoter  and  head  of  the  company. 
It  was  in  existence  from  1767  to  1771,  during  which  time  its 
agent,  Benjamin  Jacobs,  made  for  it  some  surveys  and  ex- 
plorations and  dug  a  few  tons  of  iron  ore,  but  where  these  op- 
erations were  conducted  and  who  were  the  members  of  this 
pioneer  company  some  future  antiquarian  must  discover. 

The  first  iron  enterprise  in  the  Juniata  valley  was  Bedford 
furnace,  on  Black  Log  creek,  below  its  junction  with  Shade 
creek,  at  Orbisonia,  in  Huntingdon  county,  which  was  soon 
followed  by  Bedford  forge,  on  Little  Aughwick  creek,  four 
miles  southwest  of  the  furnace.  The  furnace  and  forge  de- 
rived their  name  from  Bedford  county,  which  then  embraced 
Huntingdon  county,  the  latter  county  not  having  been  organ- 
ized until  1787.  George  Ashman  was  the  leading  spirit  in 
originating  and  promoting  these  enterprises.  He  was  a  large 
owner  of  land  at  Orbisonia  in  1780,  and  at  this  time  or  soon 
afterwards  he  became  interested  in  the  iron-ore  deposits  which 
had  been  discovered  on  his  property.  On  November  8  and  9, 
1786,  he  entered  into  an  agreement  with  Charles  Ridgely, 
Thomas  Cromwell,  and  Tempest  Tucker,  all  apparently  of 
Washington  county,  Maryland,  for  the  sale  to  them  of  "  three- 
fourths  of  two  tracts  of  land,  called  Bedford  and  Black  Log 
tracts,"  upon  which  a  saw  mill  and  grist  mill  had  been  built, 
retaining  the  other  fourth  himself,  upon  which  tracts  it  was 
agreed  that  "  an  iron  works  "  should  be  built.  The  erection 
of  a  furnace  appears  to  have  been  immediately  undertaken. 
Mr.  Tucker  died  in  1788,  and  was  the  first  man  buried  at  Or- 
bisonia. The  company  thereafter  consisted  of  Edward  Ridge- 
ly, (son  of  Charles  Ridgely,)  Thomas  Cromwell,  and  George 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  205 

Ashman.  The  furnace  was  probably  completed  in  1788.  It 
was  certainly  in  operation  before  1790,  as  on  the  2d  day  of 
March  of  that  year  Hugh  Needy  entered  into  an  agreement 
with  the  company  to  deliver  twenty-eight  ten-gallon  kettles 
and  seven  Dutch  ovens,  the  whole  weighing  12  cwt.,  3  qrs., 
and  21  Ibs.,  to  Daniel  Depue,  "  on  or  near  the  Monongahela 
river,  near  Devor's  Ferry,  in  eight  days  ensuing  the  date 
hereof."  These  articles  were  carried  on  pack-horses.  The 
forge  appears  to  have  been  built  in  1791,  as  is  shown  by  an 
itemized  statement  of  iron  made  by  the  company  from  "  the 
time  the  forge  started"  in  that  year  until  October  12,  1796, 
the  product  in  these  six  years  being  497  tons,  8  cwt.,  2  qrs., 
and  26  Ibs. 

For  the  foregoing  details  we  are  indebted  to  C.  R.  McCar- 
thy, Esq.,  of  Saltillo,  Huntingdon  county.  The  following  ad- 
ditional details  are  gathered  from  other  sources.  The  furnace 
was  of  small  capacity  and  constructed  partly  of  wood.  When 
it  was  not  engaged  in  producing  castings  it  made  from  eight 
to  ten  tons  of  pig  iron  weekly.  The  forge  made  horseshoe 
iron,  wagon  tire,  harrow  teeth,  etc.  Stoves  as  well  as  other 
articles  were  cast  at  the  furnace.  At  the  Philadelphia  Ex- 
hibition of  1876  a  stove-plate  cast  at  this  furnace  in  1792 
was  exhibited.  Bar  iron  made  at  the  forge  was  bent  into  the 
shape  of  the  letter  U,  turned  over  the  backs  of  horses,  and  in 
this  manner  taken  by  bridle-paths  to  Pittsburgh.  Bar  iron 
and  castings  from  Bedford  furnace  and  forge,  and  from  later 
iron  works  in  the  Juniata  valley,  were  also  taken  down  the 
Juniata  river  in  arks,  many  of  which  descended  to  Middle- 
town  on  the  Susquehanna,  whence  the  iron  was  hauled  to 
Philadelphia  or  sent  in  arks  down  the  Susquehanna  to  Bal- 
timore. 

Bedford  furnace  and  forge  were  abandoned  early  in  the 
present  century.  Three  other  charcoal  furnaces,  all  now 
abandoned,  have  since  been  built  on  or  near  its  site.  One  of 
these  was  Rockhill  furnace,  on  Black  Log  creek,  three-quar- 
ters of  a  mile  southeast  of  Orbisonia,  built  in  1830.  It  was 
in  operation  in  1872,  but  in  the  following  year  it  gave  place 
to  two  coke  furnaces  built  by  the  Rockhill  Iron  and  Coal 
Company. 

Centre  furnace,  on  Spring  creek,  in  Centre  county,  was  the 


206  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

second  furnace  in  the  Juniata  valley.  It  was  built  in  the 
summer  of  1791  by  Colonel  John  Patton  and  Colonel  Samuel 
Miles,  both  Revolutionary  officers.  The  first  forge  in  Centre 
county  was  Rock  forge,  on  Spring  creek,  built  in  1793  by 
General  Philip  Benner.  A  rolling  and  slitting  mill,  nail  fac- 
tory, another  forge,  etc.,  were  soon  added.  General  Benner 
had  made  iron  at  old  Coventry  forge  after  the  Revolution. 
He  died  at  Rock  on  July  27,  1832,  aged  70  years.  In  1852 
the  extensive  works  which  he  had  established  were  aban- 
doned. In  1795  Daniel  Turner  built  Spring  Creek  forge,  and 
Miles,  Harris  &  Miles  built  Harmony  forge,  also  on  Spring 
creek.  In  1798  John  Dunlop  built  Belief onte  forge,  which 
was  recently  operated  by  Valentines  &  Co.,  and  in  1802  he 
built  Logan  furnace,  three  miles  south  of  Bellefonte.  In  1824 
Valentines  &  Thomas  added  a  rolling  mill  to  the  Bellefonte 
forge.  Tussey  furnace,  in  Ferguson  township,  was  built  in 
1810  by  General  William  Patton,  son  of  Colonel  Patton.  In 
1810  Roland  Curtiii,  a  native  of  Ireland,  and  father  of  Gover- 
nor Andrew  G.  Curtin,  in  company  with  Moses  Boggs  erected 
Eagle  forge,  on  Bald  Eagle  creek,  about  five  miles  from  Belle- 
fonte, Boggs  remaining  a  partner  only  a  short  time.  In  1818 
he  built  Eagle  furnace  near  Eagle  forge.  In  1830  a  small 
rolling  mill  was  added,  for  the  manufacture  of  bar  iron  and 
nails,  and  about  the  same  year  he  built  Martha  furnace,  on 
Bald  Eagle  creek,  which  has  long  been  abandoned.  His  other 
works  are  still  in  operation  and  are  owned  by  his  children 
and  grandchildren.  He  died  in  1850,  aged  86  years.  In 
1817  Hardman  Philips,  an  enterprising  Englishman,  erected 
a  forge  and  screw  factory  at  Philipsburg,  the  latter  being  one 
of  the  first  of  its  kind  in  this  country.  Cold  Stream  forge,  in 
Rush  township  ;  Hecla  furnace,  near  Hublersburg  ;  Hannah 
furnace,  about  ten  miles  northeast  of  Tyrone ;  and  Julian 
furnace,  on  Bald  Eagle  creek,  all  in  Centre  county,  were  built 
between  1825  and  1840.  In  1829  and  1833  two  furnaces  were 
built  at  Howard  by  Harris,  Thomas  &  Co.,  to  which  a  roll- 
ing mill  was  added  in  1840.  These  works  have  been  owned 
and  operated  by  Bernard  Lauth,  together  with  a  forge  which 
was  built  in  1879,  but  they  are  now  operated  by  a  new  com- 
pany. Both  furnaces  have  been  abandoned. 

Barree  forge,  on  the  Juniata,  in  Huntingdon  county,  was 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  207 

built  about  1794  by  Bartholomew  &  Dorsey,  to  convert  the 
pig  iron  of  Centre  furnace  into  bar  iron.  Huntingdon  fur- 
nace, on  Warrior's  Mark  run,  in  Franklin  township,  was 
built  in  1796,  but  after  one  or  two  blasts  it  was  removed 
a  mile  lower  down  the  stream.  The  furnace  was  built  for 
Mordecai  Massey^nd  Judge  John  Gloninger  by  George  An- 
shutz,  who  in  1808  became  the  owner  of  one-fourth  of  the 
property.  At  the  same  time  George  Shoenberger  bought  a 
one-fourth  interest.  Before  1808  Martin  Dubbs  had  become 
a  part  owner.  A  forge  called  Massey,  on  Spruce  creek, 
connected  with  Huntingdon  furnace,  was  built  about  1800. 
The  furnace  has  been  silent  since  1870.  Tyrone  forges,  on 
the  Juniata,  were  built  by  the  owners  of  Huntingdon  furnace, 
the  first  of  the  forges  in  1804.  Gordon,  in  1832,  in  his  Gazet- 
teer of  the  State  of  Pennsylvania,  stated  that  these  forges,  with 
a  rolling  and  slitting  mill  and  nail  factory  attached,  formed 
"  a  very  extensive  establishment,"  owned  by  Messrs.  Glonin- 
ger, Anshutz  &  Co.  "  The  mill  rolls  about  150  tons,  75  of 
which  are  cut  into  nails  at  the  works,  50  tons  are  slit  into 
rods  and  sent  to  the  West,  and  about  25  tons  are  sold  in 
the  adjoining  counties." 

Juniata  forge,  at  Petersburg,  was  built  about  1804  by 
Samuel  Fahnestock  and  George  Shoenberger,  the  latter  be- 
coming sole  owner  in  1805.  George  Shoenberger  was  born  in 
Lancaster  county,  and  during  the  closing  years  of  the  last 
century  settled  on  Shaver's  creek,  in  Huntingdon  county,  as 
did  also  his  brother  Peter.  The  town  of  Petersburg  was  laid 
out  in  1795  by  Peter  Shoenberger.  In  1800  Peter  sold  to  his 
brother  George  the  Petersburg  tract  of  land.  George  Shoen- 
berger died  in  1814  or  1815.  His  only  son,  Dr.  Peter  Shoen- 
berger, succeeded  to  the  ownership  of  his  iron  enterprises. 

Coleraine  forges,  on  Spruce  creek,  were  built  in  1805  and 
1809  by  Samuel  Marshall.  There  have  been  many  forges 
on  this  creek,  none  of  which  are  now  in  operation.  Union 
furnace,  in  Morris  township,  and  Pennsylvania  furnace,  on 
the  line  dividing  Huntingdon  from  Centre  county,  were  built 
soon  after  1810  ;  the  latter  was  in  operation  as  late  as  1888, 
using  coke.  About  1818  Reuben  Trexler,  of  Berks  county, 
built  a  bloomary  called  Mary  Ann,  in  Trough  Creek  valley, 
and  about  1821  he  added  Paradise  furnace.  In  1832  John 


208  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Savage,  of  Philadelphia,  built  a  forge  near  Paradise  furnace, 
which  is  said  to  have  been  the  first  forge  in  this  country 
"that  used  the  big  hammer  and  iron  helve  on  the  English 
plan."  There  were  many  other  early  furnaces  and  forges  in 
Huntingdon  county,  but  the  earliest  have  been  mentioned. 

Etna  furnace  and  forge,  on  the  Junfata,  in  Catharine 
township,  Blair  county,  were  built  in  1805  by  Canan,  Stewart 
&  Moore.  The  furnace  was  the  first  in  Blair  county.  Cove 
forge,  on  the  Frankstown  branch  of  the  Juniata,  was  built 
between  1808  and  1810  by  John  Royer,  who  died  at  Johns- 
town in  1850,  aged  about  71  years.  Allegheny  furnace  was 
built  in  1811  by  Allison  &  Henderson,  and  was  the  second 
furnace  in  Blair  county.  In  1835  it  was  purchased  by  Elias 
Baker  and  Roland  Diller,  both  of  Lancaster  county.  The 
next  furnace  in  Blair  county  was  Springfield,  built  in  1815 
by  John  Royer  and  his  brother  Daniel.  Springfield  furnace 
and  Cove  forge  were  for  many  years  owned  and  operated  by 
John  Royer,  son  of  Daniel,  but  are  now  idle,  the  furnace 
having  been  last  in  blast  in  1885.  John  Royer  was  born  in 
Franklin  county,  Pennsylvania,  and  died  at  Cove  forge  on 
November  21, 1885,  aged  88  years.  The  next  furnace  in  this 
county  was  Rebecca,  built  in  1817.  It  was  the  first  furnace 
erected  by  Dr.  Peter  Shoenberger,  who  afterwards  became 
the  most  prominent  ironmaster  in  Pennsylvania.  The  doctor 
was  born  at  Manheim,  Lancaster  county,  in  1781 ;  died  at 
Marietta,  Lancaster  county,  on  June  18,  1854,  aged  73  years ; 
and  was  buried  in  Laurel  Hill  cemetery,  Philadelphia. 

Elizabeth  furnace,  near  Antestown,  in  Blair  county,  is 
said  to  have  been  the  first  furnace  in  the  country  to  use  gas 
from  the  tunnel-head  for  the  production  of  steam.  The  fur- 
nace was  built  in  1832,  and  the  improvement  was  patented 
about  1840  by  Martin  Bell,  the  owner  of  the  furnace. 

A  furnace  and  forge  were  built  at  Hopewell,  in  Bedford 
county,  about  the  year  1800,  by  William  Lane,  of  Lancaster 
county.  On  Yellow  creek,  two  miles  from  Hopewell,  he 
built  Lemnos  forge  and  slitting  mill  in  1806,  which  were  in 
operation  as  late  as  1833.  In  1841  Loy  &  Patterson  built 
Lemnos  furnace,  on  the  same  creek,  two  miles'  west  of  Hope- 
well.  Bedford  forge,  on  Yellow  creek,  was  built  by  Swope 
&  King  in  1812.  Elizabeth  furnace  was  built  at  Woodbury, 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  209 

in  Bedford  county,  in  1827,  by  King,  Swope  &  Co.  In  1845 
it  was  removed  to  Bloomfield,  Blair  county,  but  it  is  now 
abandoned.  In  1840  Bedford  county,  which  then  embraced 
Fulton  county  and  a  part  of  Blair  county,  contained  nine 
furnaces  and  two  forges.  Hanover  furnace  and  forge,  nine 
miles  below  McConnellsburg,  in  Fulton  county,  were  known 
as  the  Hanover  iron  works.  The  forge  was  built  in  1822  by 
John  Doyle  and  the  furnace  in  1827  by  John  Irvine.  Both 
were  abandoned  about  1850.  There  are  now  no  iron  enter- 
prises in  Fulton  county. 

The  account  books  of  the  Hanover  iron  works  from  1831 
to  1833  have  recently  been  discovered.  Among  the  frequent 
charges  in  them  against  the  workmen  is  whisky,  in  quan- 
tities of  from  one  to  five  gallons,  at  33-J  cents  per  gallon. 
Flour  is  charged  at  $3.50  per  barrel,  and  boarding  at  $1.40 
per  week  ;  James  Downs  is  charged  with  $6,  "  paid  him  to  git 
married." 

Many  other  charcoal  furnaces  and  forges  and  a  few  roll- 
ing mills  were  built  in  the  upper  part  of  the  Juniata  valley 
before  1850.  In  1832  there  were  in  operation  in  Hunting- 
don county,  which  then  embraced  a  part  of  Blair  county, 
eight  furnaces,  ten  forges,  and  one  rolling  and  slitting  mill. 
Each  of  the  furnaces  yielded  from  1,200  to  1,600  tons  of  pig 
iron  annually.  In  the  same  year  an  imperfect  list  enumer- 
ated eight  furnaces  and  as  many  forges  in  Centre  county. 
In  1850  there  were  in  Huntingdon,  Centre,  Mifflin,  and  Blair 
counties  (the  last  formed  out  of  Huntingdon  and  Bedford  in 
1846)  forty-eight  furnaces,  forty-two  forges,  and  eight  rolling 
mills,  nearly  all  of  which  were  in  Huntingdon  and  Centre 
counties.  Most  of  these  enterprises  have  been  abandoned. 

Mr.  Hungerford  advises  us  that  the  earliest  information 
obtainable  of  the  erection  of  any  iron  works  in  Mifflin  coun- 
ty is  found  ki  the  court  records  of  that  county  for  August, 
1795.  At  a  court  held  in  that  month  a  petition  was  present- 
ed asking  for  a  road  "  from  Freedom  forge,  thence  the  near- 
est and  best  way  to  the  river  Juniata  near  to,  or  at,  McClel- 
land's  landing."  The  forge  stood  on  the  present  site  of 
the  Logan  iron  and  steel  works,  at  Logan,  on  Kishacoquillas 
•creek.  The  landing  mentioned  was  at  the  mouth  of  the 
creek,  now  within  the  limits  of  the  borough  of  Lewistown1. 


210  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

The  forge  was  erected  by  William  Brown  and  William  Ma- 
clay.  It  was  sold  in  1812  to  Miller,  Martin  &  Co.,  who  be- 
gan the  erection  of  a  furnace  in  that  year.  On  November 
12,  1812,  they  advertised  in  the  Juniata  Gazette  for  workmen, 
"  as  they  are  engaged  in  building  a  furnace  at  Freedom 
forge."  This  furnace  stood  where  the  present  Emma  furnace 
was  built  at  Logan  in  1867,  and  the  power  was  obtained  from 
Hungry  run,  which  enters  Kishacoquillas  creek  at  that  place. 
Miller,  Martin  &  Co.  had  many  successors.  The  forge  built 
in  1795  was  continued  until  1878,  when  it  was  torn  down  by 
the  Logan  Iron  and  Steel  Company.  The  first  furnace  was 
torn  down  about  1820,  and  upon  its  site  was  erected  a  new 
furnace,  which  was  abandoned  about  1830.  In  1847  the  forge 
property,  consisting  of  40,000  acres  of  land,  was  sold  to  the 
Freedom  Iron  Company.  It  is  now  owned  by  the  Logan  Iron 
and  Steel  Company.  The  Standard  steel  works  are  also  lo- 
cated at  this  place.  In  1832  there  were  three  furnaces  and 
one  forge  in  Mifnin  county,  and  in  1850  there  were  five  fur- 
naces and  two  forges. 

In  June,  1797,  General  William  Lewis,  of  Berks  county, 
began  the  purchase  of  lands  on  Brightsfield  run  and  the  Ju- 
niata river,  in  Mifnin  county,  intending  to  build  a  furnace. 
In  a  mortgage  dated  June  2,  1798,  the  furnace  tract  and  ore- 
bank  lot  are  mentioned.  In  the  assessment  of  1798  William 
Lewis  is  assessed  on  430  acres  of  land  and  a  furnace  and  as 
an  ironmaster.  The  furnace  was  operated  by  James  Blaine, 
of  Cumberland  county,  a  son-in-law,  and  was  known  as  Hope 
furnace.  In  1804  General  Lewis  built  Mount  Vernon  forge 
on  Cocalamus  creek,  below  Millerstown,  in  Perry  county, 
which  was  operated  with  the  furnace.  The  forge  appears  to 
have  been  abandoned  in  1817.  In  that  year  the  furnace  was 
operated  by  Blaine,  Walker  &  Co.,  who  continued  in  busi- 
ness for  several  years.  It  was  subsequently  operated  by  vari- 
ous owners  until  1860,  when  it  was  abandoned. 

There  was  a  very  early  forge  in  Juniata  county.  It  was 
built  in  1791  on  Licking  creek,  two  miles  west  of  Mifflin- 
town,  by  Thomas  Beale  and  William  Sterrett.  It  had  two 
hammers  and  was  in  operation  about  four  years.  The  pig 
iron  for  this  forge  was  obtained  mainly  from  Centre  furnace, 
but  some  was  brought  from  Bedford  furnace. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  211 

Juniata  furnace,  three  miles  from  Newport,  was  built  in 
1808  by  David  Watts,  of  Carlisle.  In  1832  it  was  owned 
by  Captain  William  Power.  A  forge  called  Fio  was  built  on 
Sherman's  creek,  about  four  miles  from  Duncannon,  in  1829, 
by  Lindley  &  Speek.  A  forge  was  also  built  at  Duncannon 
in  the  same  year  by  Stephen  Duncan  and  John  D.  Mahon. 
Duncannon  rolling  mill  was  built  in  1838  by  Fisher,  Morgan 
&  Co.  Montebello  furnace,  at  Duncannon  ;  Oak  Grove,  four 
miles  from  Landisburg ;  Caroline,  at  Baileysburg ;  and  Perry, 
four  miles  from  Bloomfield,  all  in  Perry  county,  were  built 
between  1830  and  1840.  All  of  the  charcoal  iron  enterprises 
in  Perry  county  have  been  abandoned. 

Steel  (doubtless  blister  steel)  was  made  at  Caledonia,  near 
Bedford,  for  several  years  before  the  beginning  of  this  cent- 
ury by  William  McDermett,  who  was  born  near  Glasgow,  in 
Scotland,  and  came  to  this  country  at  the  close  of  the  Rev- 
olutionary war.  Mr.  McDermett's  works  continued  in  suc- 
cessful operation  for  about  ten  years,  when  financial  reverses 
caused  their  abandonment.  A  few  years  later  he  removed 
to  Spruce  creek,  in  Huntingdon  county,  and  there  ended  his 
days  about  1819.  Josephine,  one  of  his  daughters,  married 
in  1820  David  R.  'Porter,  then  a  young  ironmaster  on  Spruce 
creek  but  afterwards  Governor  of  Pennsylvania.  About  1818 
David  R.  Porter  and  Edward  B.  Patton  built  Sligo  forge, 
on  Spruce  creek.  After  Mr.  McDermett's  removal  to  Spruce 
creek  a  forge  and  steel  works,  called  Claubaugh,  were  built 
on  the  creek  by  his  nephew,  Thomas  McDermett,  at  which 
steel  was  made  by  the  method  that  had  been  in  use  at  Caledo- 
nia. These  works  became  the  property  of  Lloyd,  Steel  &  Co. 
about  1819,  by  whom  they  were  abandoned  in  a  few  years. 

Among  the  persons  who  have  been  prominent  in  the 
manufacture  of  iron  in  the  Juniata  valley  special  reference 
may  be  made,  in  addition  to  those  already  mentioned,  to 
Henry  S.  Spang,  John  Lyon,  Anthony  Shorb,  Andrew  Gregg, 
George  Schmucker,  and  General  James  Irvin. 

Much  of  the  iron  made  in  the  Juniata  valley  during  the 
palmy  days  of  its  iron  industry  was  sold  at  Pittsburgh,  first 
in  the  form  of  castings,  afterwards  in  both  pigs  and  bars,  and 
finally  chiefly  in  the  form  of  blooms.  Before  the  comple- 
tion of  the  Pennsylvania  Canal  and  the  Portage  Railroad  it 


212  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

was  transported  with  great  difficulty.  Bar  iron  from  Centre 
county  was  at  first  carried  on  the  backs  of  horses  to  the  Clar- 
ion river,  and  was  then  floated  on  boats  and  arks  to  Pitts- 
burgh. Pig  and  bar  iron  from  Huntingdon  county  were 
hauled  over  the  Frankstown  road  to  Johnstown,  and  thence 
floated  to  Pittsburgh  by  way  of  the  Conemaugh  river.  Sub- 
sequently blooms  were  sent  to  Pittsburgh  from  Huntingdon 
county  by  wagon.  "Juniata  iron"  was  also  largely  sold  in 
Eastern  markets,  the  Juniata  and  Susquehanna  rivers  fur- 
nishing an  outlet  before  the  building  of  the  Pennsylvania 
Canal.  It  was  noted  throughout  the  country  for  its  excellence. 
We  are  indebted  to  Isaac  Craig,  Esq.,  of  Allegheny  City, 
for  a  copy  of  the  following  advertisement,  which  appeared  in 
a  Pittsburgh  newspaper  in  1813.  The  advertiser  was  then 
operating  the  first  rolling  mill  built  at  Pittsburgh. 

WAGGONS  WANTED. — The  subscriber  wishes  to  employ  from  30  to  50 
waggons,  for  three  or  four  trips  to  the  ironworks  near  Belfont,  Centre 
county ;  and  would  be  anxious  to  engage  20  or  30  out  of  the  above  number 
to  haul  by  the  year.  A  very  considerable  advance  will  be  made  on  the 
former  rate  of  carriage.  This  added  to  the  low  price  of  feed  this  season 
holds  out  greater  inducements  to  embark  in  this  business  than  at  any  for- 
mer period.  Applications  to  me  here ;  on  which  I  will  give  my  orders,  and 
will  engage  to  pay  for  any  delay  which  may  arise  to  the  waggoners  at  the 
different  forges.  C.  COWAN.  September  9,  1813. 

In  1828,  before  the  Pennsylvania  Canal  was  completed, 
the  hauling  of  blooms  by  wagon  was  still  an  important  busi- 
ness. In  the  Blairsville  Eecord  for  January  31,  1828,  Mul- 
hollan  &  McAnulty  advertise  for  teams  to  haul  blooms  from 
Sligo  iron  works,  in  Huntingdon  county,  to. Blairsville,  offer- 
ing $15  per  ton.  After  the  canal  was  finished  the  shipment 
of  Juniata  blooms  to  Pittsburgh  greatly  increased. 


SINCE  the  preceding  chapters  were  printed  we  have  ob- 
tained additional  information  from  Mr.  George  R.  Prowell 
concerning  William  Bennett's  iron  enterprise  in  Hellam  town- 
ship, York  county,  mentioned  on  page  184.  Mr.  Bennett 
built  a  furnace  as  well  as  a  forge  on  Codorus  creek  about 
1765.  The  furnace  was  in  operation  during  the  Revolution, 
as  is  proved  by  official  documents  which  are  still  preserved 
at  York.  Iron  ore  was  probably  obtained  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  Susquehanna  river. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  213 


CHAPTER   XIX. 

THE    EARLY  MANUFACTURE    OF  IRON  IN  WESTERN 
PENNSYLVANIA. 

THE  earliest  mention  we  have  found  of  the  existence  of 
iron  ore  in  Western  Pennsylvania  occurs  in  the  careful  in- 
vestigations of  Mr.  Austin  N.  Ilungerford  into  the  early  his- 
tory of  Fayette  county.  We  quote  from  him  the  following 
interesting  particulars.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  facts  cited 
antedate  the  final  settlement,  on  September  23,  1780,  of  the 
boundary  dispute  between  Pennsylvania  and  Virginia. 

There  is  a  tradition  that  the  first  discovery  of  iron  ore  west  of  the  Al- 
legheny mountains  was  made  by  John  Hayden  in  the  winter  of  1789-90. 
This 'statement  has  been  so  often  made  in  the  writings  of  Judge  Veech  and 
others  without  contradiction  that  it  has  come  to  be  almost  universally  re- 
garded as  entirely  authentic.  That  such  is  not  the  case,  however,  and  that 
iron  ore  was  known  to  exist  in  the  valley  of  the  Youghiogheny  at  least  nine 
years  before  the  alleged  first  discovery  by  Hayden,  is  proved  by  an  entry 
found  in  the  First  Survey  Book  of  Yohogania  county,  Va.,  and  made  a  cent- 
ury ago  by  Col.  William  Crawford,  then  surveyor  of  the  said  county.  The 
following  is  a  copy  of  the  entry : 

"July  11,  1780.  No.  32.— State  Warrant.— Benjamin  Johnston  produced 
a  State  Warrant  from  the  Land  Office  for  five  hundred  acres  of  land,  dated 
the  12th  day  of  May,  1780— No.  4926.  Sixty  acres  thereof  he  locates  on  a 
big  spring  in  the  Allegany  and  Laurel  Hills,  on  the  waters  of  the  Mononga- 
lia— and  one  hundred  and  fifty  acres  of  sd  Warrant  he  locates  on  lands  of  sd 
Hills,  where  an  old  deadening  and  Sugar  Camp  was  made  by  Mr.  Chr.  Har- 
rison, situate  on  the  waters  of  Yohogania,  to  include  a  Bank  of  Iron  Ore." 

Yohogania  county,  as  established  by  the  Virginia  Legislature  in  1776, 
included  all  the  northern  and  northeastern  part  of  the  present  county  of 
Fayette.  The  Survey  Book  referred  to  is  still  in  existence  in  a  good  state  of 
preservation,  and  in  possession  of  Boyd  Crumrine,  Esq.,  of  Washington,  Pa. 

The  precise  location  of  the  tract  referred  to  as  including  the  ore  bank 
is  not  known,  nor  is  it  material.  The  quotation  is  given  above  merely  to 
disprove  the  long-accepted  statement  that  tlie  existence  of  iron  ore  west  of 
the  Alleghenies  was  unknown  prior  to  1789. 

The  Hon.  James  Veech,  to  whom  reference  is  above  made, 
published  in  the  Pittsburgh  Commercial,  on  March  29,  1871, 
an  account  of  the  discovery  of  "  blue  lump "  iron  ore  by 
John  Hayden,  of  Haydentown,  in  Fayette  county,  in  1790, 
from  which  he  made  in  a  smith's  fire  a  piece  of  iron  "  about 


214  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

as  big  as  a  harrow-tooth."  Taking  the  sample  on  horseback 
to  Philadelphia  he  enlisted  his  relative,  John  Nicholson,  of 
that  city,  then  State  Comptroller,  in  a  scheme  for  building  a 
furnace  and  forge  at  Haydentown,  on  George's  creek,  about 
seven  miles  south  of  Uniontown.  Mr.  Hungerford  says  that 
a  bloomary  was  built  by  this  firm  in  1792  but  that  it  nev- 
er built  a  furnace.  Before  the  bloomary  was  built  William 
Tumbull  and  Peter  Marmie,  with  Colonel  John  Holker  as 
a  silent  partner,  all  of  Philadelphia,  built  a  furnace  and  a 
forge  on  Jacob's  creek,  a  mile  or  two  above  its  entrance  into 
the  Youghiogheny  river.  The  court  records  of  Fayette  coun- 
ty mention  "  the  furnace  on  Jacob's  creek  "  in  June,  1789,  but 
it  had  not  then  been  put  in  blast.  It  was  first  blown  in  on 
November  1 , 1790,  and  the  iron  was  tried  the  same  day  in  the 
forge.  The  furnace  and  forge  were  on  the  Fayette  county 
side  of  the  creek,  and  were  called  the  Alliance  iron  works. 
The  furnace  was  fitfully  operated  until  1802,  when  it  finally 
went  out  of  blast.  The  stack  is  still  standing  but  in  ruins. 
This  was  the  first  furnace  west  of  the  Allegheny  mountains. 
An  extract  from  a  letter  written  by  Major  Isaac  Craig,  deputy 
quartermaster-general  and  military  storekeeper  at  Fort  Pitt, 
to  General  Knox,  dated  January  12,  1792,  says :  "As  there  is 
no  six-pound  shot  here  I  have  taken  the  liberty  to  engage 
four  hundred  at  Turnbull  &  Marmie's  furnace,  which  is  now 
in  blast."  This  shot  was  required  for  General  Wayne's  ex- 
pedition against  the  Indians  in  1792. 

Union  furnace,  on  Dunbar  creek,  four  miles  south  of 
Connellsville,  was  built  by  Isaac  Meason  in  1790  and  was 
put  in  blast  in  March,  1791.  It  was  succeeded  in  1793  by 
a  larger  furnace  of  the  same  name,  built  near  the  same  site 
by  Isaac  Meason,  John  Gibson,  and  Moses  Dillon.  An  adver- 
tisement in  the  Pittsburgh  Gazette,  dated  April  10,  1794,  men- 
tions that  Meason,  Dillon  &  Co.  have  for  sale  "  a  supply  of 
well-assorted  castings,  which  they  will  sell  for  cash  at  the 
reduced  price  of  X35  per  ton  ($93.33)."  There  was  a  forge 
connected  with  this  furnace,  called  Union  forge.  Afterwards 
another  forge  was  built  by  Mr.  Meason  at  the  mouth  of  Dun- 
bar  creek.  Another  of  Mr.  Meason's  enterprises  was  Mount 
Vernon  furnace,  on  Mountz's  creek,  eight  miles  east  of  its 
mouth,  built  before  July,  1800,  and  possibly  as  early  as  1795. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  215 

It  was  rebuilt  in  1801.  It  is  still  standing,  but  has  long  been 
abandoned.  Dunbar  furnace  now  stands  near  the  site  of  the 
original  Union  furnace. 

Spring  Hill  furnace,  on  Ruble's  run,  in  Fayette  county, 
within  three  miles  of  Cheat  river,  in  West  Virginia,  and 
near  its  junction  with  the  Monongahela,  was  built  in  1794  by 
two  Welshmen,  Benjamin  and  Robert  Jones.  This  furnace 
was  in  operation  until  1881,  but  in  1883  it  was  dismantled. 
About  1797  Old  Laurel  furnace,  on  Laurel  run,  in  Dunbar 
township,  was  built  by  Joshua  Gibson  and  Samuel  Paxson. 
This  furnace  passed  into  the  possession  of  Reuben  Mochabee 
and  Samuel  Wurtz  before  1800,  who  added  Hampton  forge, 
located  on  Indian  creek,  half  a  mile  from  the  Youghiogheny 
river.  Both  the  furnace  and  forge  were  kept  in  operation  for 
a  number  of  years.  Pine  Grove  forge,  in  George's  township, 
was  built  a  short  time  prior  to  1798  by  Thomas  Lewis. 

Prior  to  1794  Jeremiah  Pears  built  a  forge  at  Plurnsock, 
in  Menallen  township,  which  was  the  forerunner  of  a  rolling 
and  slitting  mill  built  by  Mr.  Pears  at  the  same  place  before 
1804.  In  1805  the  rolling  and  slitting  mill  and  the  remain- 
der of  Mr.  Pears's  property  were  sold  by  the  sheriff.  This 
was  probably  the  first  rolling  and  slitting  mill  erected  west 
of  the  Alleghenies.  In  1815  the  Plumsock  property  passed 
into  the  hands  of  Isaac  Meason.  In  1797  Mr.  Pears  built  Old 
Redstone  furnace,  in  South  Union  township,  Fayette  county. 
The  dilapidated  stack  of  this  furnace  is  still  standing. 

In  1797  John  Hayden  built  Fairfield  furnace,  on  George's 
creek.  John  and  Andrew  Oliphant  and  Nathaniel  Breading 
bought  an  interest  in  this  furnace  in  1798,  and  in  a  few 
years  the  Oliphants  became  its  sole  owners.  Fairchance  fur- 
nace, on  George's  creek,  six  miles  south  of  Uniontown,  was 
built  in  1804  by  John  Hayden.  J.  &  A.  Oliphant  bought  it 
about  1805.  It  was  rebuilt  two  or  three  times  and  kept  in 
operation  until  1887,  when  it  was  abandoned  and  torn  down. 
A  new  Fairchance  furnace  was  built  near  the  site  of  the  old 
one  in  1887.  The  Oliphants  built  Sylvan  forges,  on  George's 
creek,  below  Fairfield  and  Fairchance  furnaces.  It  is  said 
that  while  the  Oliphants  operated  Fairfield  furnace  they  cast 
a  quantity  of  shot  which  was  used  by  General  Jackson's  ar- 
tillery in  the  battle  of  New  Orleans.  .R  was  shipped  down 


216  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

the  Monongahela,  the  Ohio,  and  the  Mississippi  rivers.  The 
furnace  was  operated  by  the  Oliphants  and  others  for  many 
years,  but  was  abandoned  before  1850. 

In  1805  there  were  five  furnaces  and  six  forges  in  Fay- 
ette  county.  In  1805  a  rolling  and  slitting  mill  was  built 
by  John  Gibson  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Youghiogheny 
river,  below  Connellsville.  In  1811  the  county  had  ten  fur- 
naces, one  air  furnace,  eight  forges,  three  rolling  and  slitting 
mills,  one  steel  furnace,  and  five  trip-hammers.  At  a  later 
date  there  were  twenty  furnaces  in  this  county.  Fayette 
county  was  a  great  iron  centre  at  the  close  of  the  last  cent- 
ury and  far  into  the  present  century.  For  many  years  Pitts- 
burgh and  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  valleys  were  almost 
entirely  supplied  by  it  with  all  kinds  of  castings  and  with 
hammered  bar  iron.  In  1804  a  large  order  for  sugar  kettles, 
to  be  used  on  the  sugar  plantations  of  Louisiana,  was  filled  at 
Union  furnace.  Long  before  1850,  however,  the  fires  in  most 
of  the  furnaces  and  forges  of  Fayette  county  were  suffered 
to  die  out.  In  1849  only  four  of  its  furnaces  were  in  blast. 
Other  furnaces,  to  use  coke,  have  since  been  built  within  its 
boundaries,  and  in  late  years  a  large  rolling  mill  and  Besse- 
mer steel  works  have  been  built  at  Uniontown,  but  its  fame 
as  a  centre  of  the  iron  industry  has  departed.  In  its  stead 
it  now  enjoys  the  reputation  of  being  the  centre  of  produc- 
tion of  the  famous  Connellsville  coke.  Connellsville,  on  the 
Youghiogheny,  was  a  shipping  point  for  Fayette  county  iron. 

The  steel  furnace  above  referred  to  as  existing  in  1811  was 
at  Bridgeport,  adjoining  Brownsville,  was  owned  by  Truman 
&  Co.,  and  made  good  steel.  It  was  known  as  the  Browns- 
ville steel  factory.  In  1811  Truman  &  Co.  advertised  that 
they  had  for  sale  "  several  tons  of  steel  of  their  own  convert- 
ing, which  they  will  sell  at  the  factory  for  cash,  at  12  dollars 
per  cwt.,  and  20  dollars  per  faggot  for  Crowley."  The  latter 
was  an  English  brand. 

The  first  nail  factory  west  of  the  Alleghenies  was  built 
at  Brownsville,  about  1795,  by  Jacob  Bowman,  at  which 
wrought  nails  were  made  by  hand  in  one  shop  and  cut  nails 
were  made  by  machines  in  another.  These  machines  were 
worked  by  the  foot  of  the  workman,  while  his  hands  guided 
the  flat  and  thin  bar  of  iron  from  which  the  nails  were  cut. 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  217 

The  rolling  and  slitting  mills  which  were  in  existence 
in  Pennsylvania  prior  to  1816  neither  puddled  pig  iron  nor 
rolled  bar  iron,  but,  with  the  exception  of  Mr.  Rentgen's  en- 
terprise, already  noted,  rolled  only  sheet  iron  and  nail  plates 
from  blooms  hammered  under  a  tilt-hammer. 

The  first  rolling  mill  erected  in  the  United  States  to  pud- 
dle iron  and  roll  iron  bars  was  built  by  Isaac  Meason  in 
1816  and  1817  at  Plum  sock,  on  Redstone  creek,  about  mid- 
way between  Connellsville  and  Brownsville,  in  Fayette  coun- 
ty, on  the  site  of  the  rolling  and  slitting  mill  built  by  Jere- 
miah Pears  before  1804.  Thomas  C.  Lewis  was  the  chief 
engineer  in  the  erection  of  the  new  mill,  and  George  Lewis, 
his  brother,  was  the  turner  and  roller.  They  were  Welsh- 
men. F.  H.  Oliphant  told  us  in  his  lifetime  that  the  new 
mill  was  built  "for  making  bars  of  all  sizes  and  hoops  for 
cutting  into  nails."  He  further  said  that  "the  iron  was  re- 
fined by  blast  and  then  puddled."  Samuel  C.  Lewis,  son  of 
the  above  Thomas  C.  Lewis,  assisted  as  a  boy  in  rolling  the 
first  bar  of  iron.  He  died  at  Pittsburgh  on  Friday,  August 
11,  1882,  in  the  80th  year  of  his  age.  The  mill  contained 
two  puddling  furnaces,  one  refinery,  one  heating  furnace,  and 
one  tilt-hammer.  Raw  coal  was  used  in  the  puddling  and 
heating  furnaces  and  coke  in  the  refinery.  The  rolls  were 
cast  at  Dunbar  furnace,  and  the  lathe  for  turning  the  rolls 
was  put  up  at  the  mill.  The  mill  went  into  operation  on 
September  15,  1817,  and  was  kept  in  operation  for  several 
years,  the  latter  part  of  the  time  by  Arthur  Palmer.  A  flood 
in  the  Redstone  caused  the  partial  destruction  of  the  mill  in 
1831.  The  machinery  was  subsequently  taken  to  Browns- 
ville. 

Isaac  Meason,  who  did  so  much  to  develop  the  iron  re- 
sources of  Fayette  county,  was  a  native  of  Virginia.  He 
died  in  1819.  Prior  to  his  death  his  son,  Colonel  Isaac  Mea- 
son, was  associated  with  him  in  the  management  of  his  va- 
rious iron  enterprises,  and  after  his  death  he  succeeded  to 
their  entire  management.  Isaac  Meason,  Sr.,  was  a  member 
of  the  supreme  executive  council  of  Pennsylvania  f  in  1783, 
and  for  many  years  prior  to  his  death  he  was  an  associate 
judge  of  Fayette  county. 

A  furnace  named  Mary  Ann  was  erected  at  an  early  day 


218  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

in  Greene  county.  It  was  located  on  Ten-mile  creek,  opposite 
Clarksville,  and  about  twenty  miles  from  Uniontown.  It  was 
abandoned  early  in  the  present  century.  An  advertisement 
for  its  sale,  by  "Samuel  Harper,  agent  for  the  proprietors," 
dated  July  23,  1810,  styles  it  "The  Iron  Works,"  late  the 
property  of  Captain  James  Robinson.  It  was  probably  built 
about  1800.  Gordon,  in  his  Gazetteer,  (1832,)  says  that  "  there 
were  formerly  in  operation  on  Ten-mile  creek  a  forge  and 
furnace,  but  they  have  been  long  idle  and  are  falling  to  de- 
cay." This  reference  is  to  Robinson's  works.  Greene  county 
has  probably  never  had  any  other  iron  enterprises. 

Westmoreland  county  speedily  followed  Fayette  county 
in  the  manufacture  of  iron.  Westmoreland  furnace,  on  Four- 
mile  run,  near  Laughlinstown,  in  Ligonier  valley,  was  built 
about  1792  by  John  Probst,  who  also  built  a  small  forge 
about  the  same  time.  Neither  the  furnace  nor  the  forge  was 
long  in  operation,  both  probably  ceasing  to  make  iron  before 
1810.  On  the  1st  of  August,  1795,  George  Anshutz,  manager 
of  Westmoreland  furnace,  advertised  stoves  and  castings  for 
sale.  General  Arthur  St.  Clair  built  Hermitage  furnace,  on 
Mill  creek,  two  miles  northeast  of  Ligonier,  about  1802.  It 
was  managed  for  its  owner  by  James  Hamilton,  and  made 
stoves  and  other  castings.  It  was  in  blast  in  1806.  In  1810 
it  passed  out  of  the  hands  of  General  St.  Clair  and  was  idle 
for  some  time.  In  1816  it  was  started  again  by  O'Hara  & 
Scully,  under  the  management  of  John  Henry  Hopkins,  after- 
wards Protestant  Episcopal  bishop  of  Vermont.  In  October, 
1817,  Mr.  Hopkins  left  the  furnace,  himself  a  bankrupt,  and 
it  has  never  since  been  in  operation.  The  stack  is  yet  stand- 
ing. General  St.  Clair  died*  a  very  poor  man  in  1818,  aged 
84  years,  and  was  buried  at  Greensburg. 

Mount  Hope  furnace,  in  Donegal  township,  was  built  in 
1810  by  Trevor  &  McClurg.  Mount  Pleasant  furnace,  on 
Jacob's  creek,  in  Mount  Pleasant  township,  was  built  about 
1810  by  Alexander  McClurg,  and  went  out  of  blast  in  1820 
while  operated  by  Mr.  Freeman.  Mr.  McClurg  owned  it  in 
1813.  Washington  furnace,  near  Laugh linstown,  was  built 
about  1809  by  Johnston,  McClurg  &  Co.  It  was  abandoned 
in  1826,  but  rebuilt  in  1848  by  John  Bell  &  Co.  It  was  in 
blast  as  late  as  1855.  Jonathan  Maybury  &  Co.  owned  Fouu- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  219 

tain  furnace,  on  Camp  run,  in  Donegal  township,  at  the  base 
of  Laurel  hill,  before  1812.  The  firm  was  dissolved  on  Au- 
gust 19,  1812,  when  the  furnace  fell  into  the  hands  of  Alex- 
ander McClurg,  who  operated  it  in  1813.  Kingston  forge, 
erected  in  1811  on  Loyalhanna  creek,  ten  miles  east  of 
Greensburg,  by  A.  Johnston  &  Co.,  went  into  operation  early 
in  1812.  Ross  furnace,  on  Tub-mill  creek,  in  Fairfield  town- 
ship, was  built  in  1814  by  either  Isaac  Meason  or  his  son,  and 
abandoned  about  1850.  It  made  pig  iron,  stoves,  kettles,  pots, 
ovens,  skillets,  etc.  Hannah  furnace,  on  Tub-mill  creek,  in 
Fairfield  township,  a  short  distance  below  Ross  furnace,  was 
built  about  1810  by  John  Beninger.  He  also  built  a  small 
forge  on  the  same  stream,  where  the  town  of  Bolivar  now 
stands.  The  furnace  and  forge  both  ceased  to  make  iron 
soon  after  they  were  built.  Baldwin  furnace,  on  Laurel  run, 
near  Ross  furnace,  is  said  to  have  been  built  by  James  Stew- 
art about  1818.  It  ran  but  a  short  time. 

In  1832  there  were  in  operation  in  Westmoreland  county 
only  one  furnace,  (Ross,)  operated  by  Colonel  Mathiot,  and 
one  forge,  (Kingston,)  operated  by  Alexander  Johnston.  The 
latter  gentleman,  whose  name  appears  above  in  connection 
with  another  iron  enterprise,  was  the  father  of  Governor 
William  F.  Johnston.  He  was  born  in  Ireland  in  July,  1773, 
and  died  in  July,  1872,  aged  99  years. 

Seven  other  charcoal  furnaces  were  built  in  Westmore- 
land county  between  1844  and  1855.  All  the  charcoal  fur- 
naces in  this  county  have  been  abandoned.  The  early  fur- 
naces in  Westmoreland  county,  besides  supplying  local  wants, 
shipped  castings  by  boats  or  arks  on  the  Youghiogheny,  the 
Conemaugh,  and  the  Allegheny  rivers  to  Pittsburgh,  some  of 
which  found  their  way  down  the  Ohio  river  to  Cincinnati 
and  Louisville.  Subsequently  they  shipped  pig  iron  by  ca- 
nal to  Pittsburgh  rolling  mills. 

Shade  furnace,  on  Shade  creek,  in  Somerset  county,  was 
built  in  1807  or  1808,  and  was  the  first  iron  enterprise  in  the 
county.  It  used  bog  ore,  the  discovery  of  which  led  to  its 
erection,  although  the  location  was  otherwise  unfavorable.  It 
was  built  by  Gerehart  &  Reynolds  upon  lands  leased  from 
Thomas  Vickroy.  In  November,  1813,  Mr.  Vickroy  advertis- 
ed Shade  furnace  for  sale  at  "  a  great  bargain."  A  sale  was 


220  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

effected  in  1819  to  Mark  Richards,  Anthony  S.  Earl,  and 
Benjamin  Johns,  of  New  Jersey,  composing  the  firm  of  Rich- 
ards, Earl  &  Co.,  which  operated  the  furnace  down  to  about 
1830.  In  1820  they  built  Shade  forge,  below  the  furnace, 
which  was  operated  by  William  Earl  for  four  or  five  years, 
and  afterwards  by  John  Hammer  and  others.  About  1811 
Joseph  Vickroy  and  Conrad  Piper  built  Mary  Ann  forge,  on 
Stony  creek,  about  five  miles  below  Shade  furnace  and  half 
a  mile  below  the  mouth  of  Shade  creek.  David  Livingston 
was  subsequently  the  owner  of  the  forge,  and  operated  it  for 
several  years.  Richard  Geary,  the  father  of  Governor  John 
W.  Geary,  was  the  manager  of  the  forge  for  about  one  year, 
and  was  supercargo  of  a  load  of  bar  iron  which  was  shipped 
from  the  forge  down  the  Stony  creek,  the  Conemaugh,  and 
other  streams  to  Pittsburgh.  Pig  iron  was  sometimes  packed 
on  horseback  to  this  forge  from  Bedford  county,  the  horses 
taking  bar  iron  from  the  forge  and  also  salt  from  the  Cone- 
maugh salt  works  as  a  return  load. 

In  the  year  1809  or  1810  Peter  Kimrnell  and  Matthias 
Scott  built  a  forge  for  the  manufacture  of  bar  iron  on  Laurel 
Hill  creek,  now  in  Jefferson  township,  in  the  western  part  of 
Somerset  county.  It  ceased  operations  about  1815.  Supplies 
of  pig  iron  were  obtained  in  Bedford  and  Fayette  counties. 
About  the  year  1810  Robert  Philson  erected  a  forge  and  fur- 
nace on  Casselman's  river,  in  Turkeyfoot  township.  This 
enterprise  was  a  failure.  Four  other  charcoal  furnaces  were 
afterwards  built  in  Somerset  county.  All  the  furnaces  and 
forges  in  this  county  have  long  been  abandoned. 

The  first  iron  enterprise  in  Cambria  county  was  a  forge 
at  Johnstown,  built  on  Stony  creek,  about  1809,  probably 
by  John  Holliday,  a  resident  of  Hollidaysburg.  John  Buck- 
waiter  was  the  first  manager.  The  dam  of  this  forge  was 
washed  away  about  1811,  and  subsequently  the  forge  was 
removed  to  the  Conemaugh  river,  below  Johnstown,  where 
the  schoolhouse  on  Iron  street  now  stands,  in  the  Millville 
addition  to  Johnstown,  and  where  it  was  operated  down  to 
about  1822,  Rahm  &  Bean,  of  Pittsburgh,  being  the  lessees  at 
this  time.  It  was  used  to  hammer  bar  iron  out  of  Juniata 
pig  iron,  and  blooms.  In  1817  Thomas  Burrell,  the  propri- 
etor, offered  wood-cutters  "  fifty  cents  per  cord  for  chopping 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  221 

two  thousand  cords  of  wood  at  Cambria  forge,  Johnstown." 
About  200  pounds  of  nails,  valued  at  $30,  were  made  at 
Johnstown  by  one  establishment  in  the  census  year  1810. 
About  this  time  an  enterprise  was  established  at  Johnstown 
by  Robert  Pierson,  by  which  nails  were  cut  with  a  machine 
worked  by  a  treadle,  but  without  heads,  which  were  after- 
wards added  by  hand.  Cambria  county  has  been  noted  as 
an  iron  centre  since  its  first  furnace,  Cambria,  was  built  by 
George  S.  King,  David  Stewart,  John  K.  Shryock,  and  Will- 
iam L.  Shryock,  in  1841,  on  Laurel  run.  It  was  followed  in 
the  next  six  years  by  five  other  charcoal  furnaces.  All  these 
furnaces  have  been  abandoned.  The  extensive  works  of 
the  Cambria  Iron  Company,  at  Johnstown,  were  commenced 
in  1853  by  a  company  of  which  Mr.  King  was  the  origina- 
tor and  Dr.  Peter  Shoenberger  was  a  member.  They  were 
built  expressly  to  roll  rails,  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  pass- 
ing through  Johnstown,  having  been  completed  from  Phila- 
delphia to  Pittsburgh  in  the  preceding  year,  and  furnishing 
a  local  incentive  to  their  erection  as  well  as  a  convenient 
means  of  communication  with  other  sections  of  the  country 
in  need  of  rails.  Dr.  Shoenberger  had  previously  become  a 
half  owner  of  Cambria  furnace  and  a  part  owner  of  several 
other  furnaces  and  of  large  tracts  of  land  near  Johnstown. 
In  1832  Gordon  referred  to  the  prospect  of  making  iron 
from  native  ore  in  Cambria  county  as  follows :  "  And  there 
is  iron,  as  it  is  said  by  some,  but  denied  by  others."  Mr. 
King  tested  at  Ross  furnace  in  1839  or  1840  the  ore  which 
he  had  found  in  the  hills  near  Laurel  run. 

The  first  iron  enterprise  in  Indiana  county  was  Indiana 
forge,  on  Finley's  run,  near  the  Conemaugh,  built  about  1837 
by  Henry  and  John  Noble,  who  also  built  a  small  furnace 
as  early  as  1840.  The  forge  was  operated  by  water-power 
but  the  furnace  by  steam-power.  Both  enterprises  were  run- 
ning in  the  last-named  year.  Pig  iron  for  the  forge  was  at 
first  obtained  from  Allegheny  furnace,  now  in  Blair  county. 
Some  iron  ore  for  the  furnace  was  obtained  from  the  Alle- 
gheny furnace  mines.  About  1837  John  Noble  owned  a  farm 
of  about  200  acres  in  the  heart  of  the  present  city  of  Altoo- 
na,  which  he  sold  to  David  Robinson,  of  Pleasant  valley,  for 
$4,500,  taking  in  payment  the  contents  of  Mr.  Robinson's 


222  THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 

country  store,  which  he  removed  to  Finley's  run  and  added 
to  the  capital  stock  of  the  firm  of  Henry  and  John  Noble. 
The  Altoona  farm  is  now  worth  many  millions  of  dollars. 
About  1846  the  Indiana  property  passed  into  the  hands  of 
Elias  Baker,  who  built  a  new  furnace  and  forge.  Three  other 
charcoal  furnaces  were  built  in  Indiana  county  in  1846  and 
1847.  All  its  furnaces  and  its  solitary  forge  have  long  been 
abandoned. 

A  blast  furnace  was  built  at  Beaver  Falls,  on  the  west 
side  of  Beaver  river,  in  Beaver  county,  in  1802,  by  Hoopes, 
Townsend  &  Co.,  and  blown  in  in  1804.  A  forge  was  con- 
nected with  it  from  the  beginning,  and  was  in  operation  in 
1806.  The  furnace  and  forge  were  both  in  operation  in  1816. 
The  whole  enterprise  was  abandoned  about  1826.  The  ore 
used  was  picked  out  of  gravel  banks  in  the  neighborhood 
in  very  small  lumps.  There  was  another  early  furnace  in 
Beaver  county,  named  Bassenheim,  built  in  1814  by  Detmar 
Basse  Miiller,  on  Connoquenessing  creek,  about  a  mile  west 
of  the  Butler  county  line.  In  February,  1818,  $12  per  ton 
were  paid  for  hauling  the  pig  iron  made  at  this  furnace  to 
Pittsburgh,  thirty  miles  distant,  over  a  bad  road.  The  fur- 
nace was  abandoned  at  an  early  day.  John  Henry  Hop- 
kins, previously  mentioned  in  connection  with  General  St. 
Glair's  furnace  near  Ligonier,  was  engaged  about  1815  as  a 
clerk  at  Bassenheim  furnace. 

Prior  to  1846  there  were  a  few  furnaces  in  the  Shenango 
valley,  all  charcoal,  one  of  which  was  Springfield  furnace, 
half  a  mile  from  Leesburg  and  seven  miles  southeast  of 
Mercer,  built  in  1837  and  active  in  1849,  while  another  was 
Temperance  furnace,  about  six  miles  east  of  Greenville,  built 
by  J.  Green  Butler  about  1840.  Day,  in  1843,  says :  "  Two 
furnaces  were  wrought  formerly,  but  have  since  been  aban- 
doned." In  1806  the  geographer  Joseph  Scott  says  that  "a 
forge  and  furnace  are  now  nearly  erected"  at  New  Castle. 
About  1810  there  was  a  forge  on  Neshannock  creek,  "  mid- 
way between  Pearson's  flour  mill  and  Harvey's  paper  mill," 
for  the  manufacture  of  bar  iron  from  the  ore.  The  first 
rolling  mill  in  Lawrence  county  was  built  in  1839  at  New 
Castle  by  James  D.  White,  of  that  place,  with  the  assistance 
of  Shubal  Wilder,  of  Massachusetts,  Joseph  H.  Brown,  and 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  223 

other  practical  ironworkers.  It  made  cut  nails  and  bar  iron. 
At  first  only  Juniata  blooms  were  used,  as  the  mill  did  not 
contain  any  puddling  furnaces.  In  1841,  after- the  death  of 
Mr.  White,  Messrs.  A.  L.  and  J.  M.  Crawford  and  George  K. 
Bitter,  all  of  Montgomery  county,  Pennsylvania,  bought  the 
mill  property,  and,  with  the  practical  men  above  mentioned, 
organized  the  firm  of  J.  M.  Crawford  &  Co.,  which  enlarged 
the  mill  and  continued  to  make  bar  iron  and  nails.  In  1850 
the  Cosalo  Iron  Company  was  organized,  with  A.  L.  Crawford 
as  president  and  Mr.  Wilder  as  superintendent.  In  1853  a 
new  and  larger  mill  was  built.  In  1846  and  afterwards  sev- 
eral furnaces  were  built  in  this  valley  to  use  its  block  coal 
and  also  charcoal,  and  several  rolling  mills  were  also  built. 

Alexander  L.  Crawford  died  at  New  Castle  on  April  1, 
1890,  aged  about  76  years.  He  was  for  fifty  years  one  of 
the  country's  most  prominent  iron  manufacturers.  He  was 
also  prominent  in  the  building  of  railroads  and  in  the  de- 
velopment of  our  coal  mines,  his  various  enterprises  extend- 
ing to  many  States.  Shubal  Wilder  died  suddenly  at  Mid- 
dleboro,  Massachusetts,  in  May,  1888,  aged  about  79  years. 

The  first  furnace  in  the  once  important  but  now  nearly 
neglected  ironmaking  district  composed  of  Armstrong,  But- 
ler, Clarion,  Venango,  and  other  northwestern  counties  was 
Bear  Creek,  in  Armstrong  county,  which  was  commenced  in 
1818  by  William  Stackpole  and  Ruggles  Whiting,  who  then 
owned  the  Pittsburgh  rolling  mill.  In  1819,  owing  to  the 
failure  of  this  firm,  the  furnace  passed  uncompleted  into  the 
hands  of  Baldwin,  Robinson,  McNickle  &  Beltzhoover,  of 
Pittsburgh.  It  went  into  operation  in  that  year.  It  was 
built  to  use  coke,  with  steam-power,  and  its  first  blast  was 
with  this  fuel,  but  the  blast  was  too  weak  and  the  furnace 
chilled  after  two  or  three  tons  of  iron  had  been  made.  Char- 
coal was  then  substituted.  The  furnace  was  abandoned  long 
before  1850,  but  it  was  running  in  1832,  in  which  year  Gor- 
don says  that  it  was  owned  by  Henry  Baldwin,  Esq.,  and 
was  reputed  to  be  the  largest  furnace  in  the  United  States, 
having  made  forty  tons  of  iron  in  a  week.  This  furnace 
had  a  tram-road,  with  wooden  rails,  in  1818. 

Slippery  Rock  furnace,  in  Butler  county,  and  Clarion  fur- 
nace, in  Clarion  county,  were  built  in  1828,  the  latter  by 


224  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

Christian  Myers,  of  Lancaster  county,  who  built  another 
furnace  about  1844,  which  he  called  Polk.  Allegheny  furnace, 
at  Kittanning,  in  Armstrong  county,  and  Venango  furnace, 
on  Oil  creek,  in  Venango  county,  were  built  in  1830.  From 
1830  to  1850  this  section  of  the  State  produced  large  quanti- 
ties of  charcoal  pig  iron.  In  1850  there  were  eleven  furnaces 
in  Armstrong  county,  six  in  Butler,  twenty-eight  in  Clarion, 
and  eighteen  in  Venango  :  sixty-three  in  all.  In  1858  there 
were  eighteen  in  Armstrong,  six  in  Butler,  twenty-seven  in 
Clarion,  and  twenty-four  in  Venango  :  seventy-five  in  all. 
All  these  were  charcoal  furnaces,  except  four  coke  furnaces 
at  Brady's  Bend.  Many  of  these  furnaces  had,  however,  been 
abandoned  at  the  latter  date,  and  every  one  has  since  been 
abandoned.  Most  of  these  furnaces  were  built  to  supply  the 
Pittsburgh  rolling  mills  with  pig  iron. 

The  Great  Western  iron  works  at  Brady's  Bend,  embrac- 
ing four  furnaces  to  use  coke  and  a  rolling  mill,  were  com- 
menced by  Philander  Raymond  and  others  in  1840.  The 
furnaces  were  finally  blown  out  in  1873  and  the  rolling  mill 
was  abandoned  in  the  same  year.  It  was  built  in  1841  to 
roll  bar  iron,  but  it  afterwards  rolled  iron  rails,  which  were 
at  first  mere  flat  bars,  with  holes  for  spikes  countersunk  in 
the  upper  surface.  The  mill  continued  to  make  rails  until 
after  the  close  of  the  civil  war.  In  1849  the  original  Great 
Western  Iron  Company  failed,  and  upon  its  reorganization 
the  name  was  changed  to  the  Brady's  Bend  Iron  Company. 
There  was  a  large  amount  of  Boston  capital  at  one  time  in- 
vested in  these  works. 

Erie  charcoal  furnace,  at  Erie,  was  built  in  1842  and  aban- 
doned in  1849.  It  used  bog  ore.  It  was  owned  by  Charles 
M.  Reed.  Liberty  furnace,  on  the  north  side  of  French 
creek,  in  Crawford  county,  was  built  in  1842  by  Lowry  & 
Co.,  of  Meadville,  and  abandoned  in  1849. 

The  iron  manufactured  in  the  Allegheny  valley  was  tak- 
en down  the  Allegheny  river  to  Pittsburgh  on  keel-boats  and 
arks,  the  business  of  transporting  it  in  this  primitive  man- 
ner being  quite  extensive  down  to  about  1850. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  225 


CHAPTER  XX. 

EARLY  IRON  ENTERPRISES  IN  ALLEGHENY  COUNTY, 
PENNSYLVANIA. 

THE  beginning  of  the  iron  industry  at  Pittsburgh  was 
made  at  a  comparatively  recent  period.  George  Anshutz,  the 
pioneer  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  at  Pittsburgh,  was  an  Al- 
sacian  by  birth,  Alsace  at  the  time  being  under  the  control 
of  France.  He  was  born  near  Strasburg,  on  November  28, 
1753.  In  1789  he  emigrated  to  the  United  States,  and  soon 
afterwards  located  at  a  suburb  of  Pittsburgh  now  known  as 
Shady  Side,  where  he  built  a  small  furnace  on  Two-mile  run, 
probably  completing  it  in  1792.  In  1794  it  was  abandoned 
for  want  of  ore.  It  had  been  expected  that  ore  could  be  ob- 
tained in  the  vicinity,  but  this  expectation  was  not  realized, 
and  the  expense  entailed  in  bringing  ore  from  other  localities 
was  too  great.  The  enterprise  seems  to  have  been  largely  de- 
voted to  the  casting  of  stoves  and  grates.  The  ruins  of  the 
furnace  were  visible  until  about  1850.  After  the  abandon- 
ment of  his  furnace  Mr.  Anshutz  accepted  the  management 
of  John  Probst's  Westmoreland  furnace,  near  Laughlinstown, 
and  remained  there  about  one  year,  whence  he  removed  to 
Huntingdon  county,  where,  in  connection  with  Judge  John 
Gloninger  and  Mordecai  Massey,  he  built  Huntingdon  fur- 
nace in  1796,  as  has  already  been  stated  in  a  preceding 
chapter.  He  died  at  Pittsburgh  on  February  28,  1837,  aged 
83  years  and  3  months.  Many  of  his  descendants  reside  in 
Pittsburgh  and  its  vicinity. 

We  have  received  from  Mr.  George  A.  Berry,  president  of 
the  Citizens'  National  Bank,  of  Pittsburgh,  and  a  grandson  of 
George  Anshutz,  the  following  interesting  reminiscences  of 
Mr.  Anshutz's  pioneer  iron  enterprise  at  Shady  Side.  His 
letter  containing  these  reminiscences  is  dated  at  Pittsburgh, 
May  8,  1891.  We  give  his  statement  in  its  entirety. 

I  am  now  on  the  verge  of  entering  my  74th  year,  and  I  have  a  very 
clear  recollection  of  things  fifty  and  even  sixty  years  ago.  I  often  heard 
my  grandfather  speak  of  the  furnace,  as  well  as  my  uncles  and  aunts,  all 


226  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

brothers  and  sisters  of  my  mother,  some  of  whom  have  lived  to  within  the 
last  fifteen  years.  Mrs.  Rahm,  my  mother's  oldest  sister,  who  was  born  on 
February  17, 1788,  and  died  on  July  31, 1878,  was  four  years  old  when  the 
fur^ce  was  built.  She  had  a  very  clear  -recollection  of  it  and  told  me  many 
circumstances  connected  with  it.  I  have  a  family  Bible  which  has  been 
in  our  family  for  over  seventy  years  and  in  which  my  mother's  birth,  on 
December  27, 1793,  is  recorded,  and  I  had  it  from  her  as  well  as  from  all 
the  family  that  she  was  born  at  the  furnace  referred  to  above. 

In  my  younger  days  I  heard  many  of  the  older  residents  of  the  east 
end  of  the  city  speak  of  seeing  the  old  stack.  Major  William  B.  Negley, 
one  of  our  oldest  and  best-known  citizens,  told  me  to-day  that,  when  he 
first  built  on  the  site  now  occupied  by  the  mansion  of  M.  K.  Moorhead, 
Esq.,  he  took  down  part  of  the  old  stack,  and  going  through  the  cinder 
pile  found  several  relics  of  the  business,  such  as  a  shovel,  pick,  etc.  John 
A.  Kenshaw,  Esq.,  who  also  built  on  part  of  the  property,  told  me  he 
could  locate  the  spot  occupied  by  the  furnace  as  well  as  the  tail-race  which 
carried  the  water  from  the  furnace.  On  several  occasions  I  talked  with  the 
late  William  M.  Lyon  on  this  subject.  He  mentioned  several  things  in 
connection  with  the  furnace,  among  others  that  after  my  grandfather 
abandoned  it  it  was  used  by  Anthony  Beelen  as  a  foundry.  The  family 
of  the  late  Jonas  Roup  had  in  use  until  a  recent  period  pots,  skillets,  etc., 
made  at  the  furnace. 

The  late  Judge  James  Veech  was  considered  authority  on  all  matters 
of  the  olden  time.  He  came  here  from  Fayette  county,  and  I  think  wrote 
a  history  of  the  county.  In  a  long  newspaper  article  now  before  me,  in 
which  he  endeavors  to  establish  the  fact  that  the  first  blast  furnace  west 
of  the  Allegheny  mountains  was  built  in  Fayette  and  not  in  Allegheny 
county,  he  says,  speaking  of  my  grandfather's  furnace :  "  My  researches 
on  the  subject  put  the  abortive  enterprise  at  least  two  years  later."  [That 
is,  1792  instead  of  1790.]  "The  facts  on  this  subject  which  I  am  about 
to  state  are  made  out  mostly  from  records  consulted  and  from  original 
papers."  He  thus  admits  the  existence  of  the  furnace  but  is  a  little  doubt- 
ful of  dates.  Of  course  if  the  furnace  was  built,  of  which  there  is  no 
doubt,  it  was  put  in  blast,  but  for  how  long  I  have  no  positive  knowl- 
edge. However  this  may  be  I  always  heard  that  ore  was  not  found  in 
sufficient  quantity  in  thfe  neighborhood  of  the  furnace,  and  that  the  sup- 
ply for  awhile  was  brought  down  the  Allegheny  river,  but  this  being  too 
expensive  the  enterprise  was  abandoned. 

My  grandfather  next  turns  up  at  Westmoreland  furnace,  as  will  be  seen 
from  an  advertisement  in  the  Pittsburgh  Gazette,  as  follows :  "  Westmoreland 
Furnace. — For  sale  at  said  furnace,  about  3  miles  from  Fort  Ligonier,  near 
the  State  Road,  stoves  and  a  fine  assortment  of  the  best  castings,  at  the 
most  reasonable  prices.  GEO.  ANSHUTZ,  Manager.  August  7th,  1795." 

I  think  that  the  above  information  will  satisfy  you  that  George  An- 
shutz  built  the  first  furnace  that  was  built  in  Allegheny  county,  and  that  it 
was  in  operation  about  the  years  1792  to  1794.  GEO.  ANSHUTZ  BERRY. 

The  first  iron  foundry  at  Pittsburgh  was  established  about 
1805  by  Joseph  McClurg  on  the  site  of  the  present  post-office 
and  the  city  hall,  on  the  northeast  corner  of  Smithfield  street 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  227 

and  Fifth  avenue.  Rev.  A.  A.  Lambing  says  that  Joseph 
Smith  and  John  Gormly  were  associated  with  Mr.  McClurg 
in  this  enterprise.  They  retired,  however,  before  1807.  jj^Tr. 
McClurg  subsequently  took  his  son  "Alexander  into  partner- 
ship. The  enterprise  was  styled  the  Pittsburgh  foundry. 
Isaac  Craig,  Esq.,  informs  us  that  on  February  12,  1806, 
Joseph  McClurg  advertised  in  the  Commonwealth  that  "the 
Pittsburgh  Foundry  is  now  complete."  In  1812  it  was  con- 
verted by  Mr.  McClurg  into  a  cannon  foundry  and  supplied 
the  General  Government,  with  cannon,  howitzers,  shells,  and 
balls.  Commodore  Perry's  fleet  on  Lake  Erie  and  General 
Jackson's  army  at  New  Orleans  received  their  supplies  of 
these  articles  in  part  from  this  foundry. 

According  to  Cramer's  Pittsburgh  Almanack  there  were 
three  nail  factories  at  Pittsburgh  in  1807 — Porter's,  Stur- 
geon's, and  Stewart's,  "  which  make  about  40  tons  of  nails 
yearly."  In  1810  about  200  tons  of  cut  and  wrought  nails 
were  made  at  Pittsburgh.  In  1813  there  were  two  iron 
foundries  in  this  city,  McClurg's  and  Anthony  Beelen's,  and 
one  steel  furnace,  owned  by  Tuper  &  McCowan.  In  the  fol- 
lowing year  there  were  two  additional  foundries.  Mr.  Bee- 
len's foundry  was  put  in  operation  in  November,  1810. 

The  condition  of  the  iron  industry  at  Pittsburgh  in  1810 
is  thus  summed  up  by  a  writer  in  The  Navigator  for  1811 : 
"  The  manufacture  of  ironmongery  has  increased  in  this 
place  beyond  all  calculation.  Cut  and  wrought  nails  of  all 
sizes  are  made  in  vast  quantities,  about,  we  think,  200  tons 
per  year.  Fire  shovels,  tongs,  drawing-knives,  hatchets,  two 
feet  squares,  augers,  chissels,  adzes,  axes,  claw  hammers,  door 
hinges,  chains,  hackles,  locks,  door  handles,  spinning-wheel 
irons,  plough  irons,  flat-irons,  &c.,  tons  of  these,  together  with 
a  number  of  other  articles  in  the  iron  way,  are  exported 
annually.  Abner  Updegraff  attempted  the  making  of  files, 
which  he  finds  he  can  do  to  advantage.  He  also  makes 
gimblets,  and  by  way  of  experiment  made  a  neat  penknife, 
which  he  says  could  be  made  here  as  cheap  as  those  import- 
ed." The  making  of  screws  for  butt  hinges  is  also  noted. 

A  rolling  mill  was  built  at  Pittsburgh  in  1811  and  1812 
by  Christopher  Cowan,  a  Scotch-Irishman,  and  called  the 
Pittsburgh  rolling  mill.  This  mill  had  no  puddling  furnaces. 


228  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Cramer's  Pittsburgh  Almanack  for  1813  says  of  this  enterprise  : 
"  C.  Cowan  is  erecting  a  most  powerful  steam  engine  to  re- 
duce iron  to  various  purposes.  It  is  calculated  for  a  seventy 
horse  poiver,  which  [will]  put  into  complete  operation  a  Roll- 
ing-mill^ a  Slitting-mitt,  and  a  Tilt-hammer,  all  under  the  same 
roof.  With  these  Mr.  Cowan  will  be  enabled  to  furnish  sheet- 
iron,  nail  and  spike  rods,  shovels  and  tongs,  spades,  scythes, 
sickles,  hoes,  axes,  frying-pans,  cutting-knives.  In  addition 
to  Mr.  Cowan's  already  extensive  nail  business  he  makes  a 
great  supply  of  chains,  plough  irons,  shingling  hatchets,  clew 
hammers,  chissels,  screw  augers,  spinning  wheel  irons,  and 
smiths'  vices  of  superior  quality."  This  rolling  mill  stood 
at  the  intersection  of  Penn  street  and  Cecil's  alley,  where  the 
fourth  ward  school-house  now  stands.  In  1816  it  was  owned 
by  William  Stackpole  and  Ruggles  Whiting,  of  Boston,  who 
failed  in  1819,  and  who  seem  to  have  made  nails  chiefly  by 
nail-cutting  machines  which  both  cut  and  headed  the  nails. 
In  1826  it  was  operated  by  R.  Bowen. 

In  the  Pittsburgh  Almanack  for  1819  the  following  account 
is  given  of  an  ambitious  manufacturing  establishment  in 
Pittsburgh  "  within  the  year  1818  : "  "  Rolling  and  Slitting 
Mill. — A  very  extensive  establishment  under  the  superintend- 
ence of  Joshua  Malen,  formerly  of  Valley  Forge,  and  whose 
talents  will  be  an  important  acquisition  to  this  section  of  the 
Union,  has  been  made  by  the  'Pittsburgh  Steam  Engine  Co.' 
.Wm.  Robinson,  jr.  &  Joshua  Malen.  At  their  rolling  mill, 
which  has  two  engines,  each  of  120  horse  power,  will  be  man- 
ufactured Bar,  Boiled,  and  Sheet  Iron."  Our  extracts  from,  the 
Almanack  are  taken  from  its  pages  verbatim.  We  can  not 
locate  the  above  enterprise. 

The  Union  rolling  mill  was  the  next  mill  built  at  Pitts- 
burgh. It  was  located  on  the  Monongahela  river,  was  built 
in  1819,  and  was  accidentally  blown  up  and  permanently  dis- 
mantled in  1829,  the  machinery  being  taken  to  Covington, 
Kentucky.  This  mill  had  four  puddling  furnaces — the  first 
in  Pittsburgh.  We  think  that  it  was  also  the  first  to  roll 
bar  iron.  It  was  built  by  Baldwin,  Robinson,  McNickle  &_ 
Beltzhoover.  Jt  is  claimed  that  the  first  angle  iron  rolled 
in  the  United  States  was  rolled  at  this  mill  by  Samuel  Leon- 
ard, who  also  rolled  "  L  "  iron  for  salt  pans.  On  Pine  creek, 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  229 

on  the  site  of  the  present  works  of  Spang,  Chalfant  &  Co., 
at  Etna,  Belknap,  Bean  &  Butler  manufactured  scythes  and 
sickles  as  early  as  1820,  but  in  1824  their  works  were  en- 
larged and  steam-power  introduced  for  the  purpose  of  roll- 
ing blooms.  In  1826  the  works  were  operated  by  M.  B.  Bel- 
knap.  They  afterwards  passed  into  the  hands  of  Cuddy  & 
Ledlie,  and  were  purchased  by  H.  S.  Spang  in  1828  to  roll 
bar  iron  from  Juniata  blooms.  A  rolling  mill  on  Grant's  Hill 
was  built  in  1821  by  William  B.  Hays  and  David  Adams.  It 
stood  near  where  the  court-house  now  stands.  Water  for  the 
generation  of  steam  at  this  mill  had  to  be  hauled  from  the 
Monongahela  river.  The  Juniata  iron  works  were  built  in 
1824  by  Dr.  Peter  Shoenberger  on  the  site  which  they  now 
occupy.  Sligo  rolling  mill  was  erected  where  it  now  stands 
by  Robert  T.  Stewart  and  John  Lyon  in  1825,  but  it  was 
partly  burned  down  in  that  year.  The  Dowlais  works,  in 
Kensington,  were  built  in  1825  by  George  Lewis  and  Reuben 
Leonard.  In  1826  all  these  mills  did  not  make  bar  iron; 
one  or  two  rolled  and  hammered  iron  in  other  forms. 

The  condition  of  the  iron  industry  at  Pittsburgh  at  the 
close  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  present  century  is  thus  sum- 
med up  in  Cramer's  Magazine  Almanac  for  1826 : 

The  manufactures  of  Pittsburgh,  particularly  in  the  article  of  iron,  be- 
gin to  assume  a  very  interesting  aspect.  Not  less  than  five  rolling  mills  are 
now  in  operation,  and  a  sixth  will  soon  be  ready,  for  the  various  manufact- 
ures of  iron.  Four  of  the  mills  are  capable  of  making  iron  from  the  pig, 
besides  rolling,  slitting,  and  cutting  into  nails.  The  other  (occupied  by 
Mr.  R.  Bowen,  formerly  by  the  Messrs.  Whitings,  and  owned  and  built  by 
Mr.  C.  Cowan)  is  engaged  only  in  rolling  bar  and  boiler  iron  and  cutting 
nails.  The  fuel  to  supply  the  engines— the  metal  and  other  materials  re- 
quired in  conducting  the  operation  of  these  works,  and  in  their  repairs,  it 
is  computed  afford  employment  to  upwards  of  fifteen  hundred  people,  the 
value  of  whose  labour  may  be  estimated  at  fifteen  hundred  dollars  each 
per  annum,  or  two  million  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars,  while 
the  total  product  may  be  estimated  at  three  million  of  dollars ! !  How  im- 
portant an  addition  to  the  national  wealth  in  this  section  of  the  Union ! 
Great  credit  is  due  to  Messrs.  Baldwin,  Robinson  &  McNickle  for  their 
perseverance  in  establishing  this  important  branch  of  business,  and  for 
bringing  it  to  that  perfection  which  it  has  attained.  Great  facilities  are 
now  afforded  to  mechanics  in  all  the  various  branches  of  smith  work  and 
hardware  by  the  preparation  of  iron  into  whatever  shape  (slit,  rolled, 
square,  or  round)  that  may  be  required  for  any  particular  description  of 
work.  It  is  generally  believed  that  no  other  place  in  the  Union  affords 
greater  advantages  for  the  extensive  manufacture  of  anvils,  vices,  and  all 


230  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

kinds  of  iron  work.  The  competition  which  at  present  exists,  and  which 
is  increasing  by  the  erection  of  new  works,  will  ensure  a  plentiful  supply 
of  iron  and  nails  for  the  Western  States,  of  an  improving  quality,  on  bet- 
ter terms  than  they  can  be  procured  from  the  seaboard. 

The  first  rolling  mill  in  Allegheny  City  was  the  Juniata 
rolling  mill,  built  in  1827.  It  bore  the  same  name  as  Dr. 
Shoenberger's  mill  previously  erected  in  Pittsburgh  in  1824, 
but  it  must  not  be  confounded  with  it.  The  following  cir- 
cumstantial account  of  the  Allegheny  City  enterprise  we  take 
from  Recollections  of  Seventy  Years,  by  Judge  John  E.  Parke, 
who  died  in  Allegheny  City  on  April  22, 1885,  aged  78  years. 

The  Juniata  rolling  mill  was  built  on  the  lot  extending  from  Robin- 
son street  along  the  west  side  of  Darragh  street  to  the  Allegheny  river,  at 
the  former  outlet  of  the  Pennsylvania  Canal,  by  Sylvanus  Lothrop,  James 
Anderson,  and  Henry  Blake,  in  the  years  1826  and  1827.  Mr.  Blake  sold 
his  interest  to  Capt.  William  Stewart,  and  Messrs.  Lothrop,  Anderson,  and 
Stewart  sold  out  their  interest  in  1834  to  John  Bissell,  William  Morrison, 
and  Edward  W.  Stephens.  The  mill,  having  been  constructed  for  the 
exclusive  use  of  Juniata  blooms,  was  extended  by  the  latter  firm  to  the 
manufacture  of  iron  by  the  puddling  and  boiling  process,  and  was  the  first 
boiling  furnace  erected  in  Allegheny  county.  Here,  too,  was  also  erected 
the  first  coffee-mill  squeezer,  under  the  personal  superintendence  of  the 
patentee,  Mr.  Burden,  of  New  York.  The  manufacture  of  iron,  nails,  and 
steel  of  the  lowest  grade  was  successfully  carried  on  by  the  latter  firm  and 
their  successors  until  the  year  1859,  when  it  was  deemed  advisable  to  dis- 
mantle the  works.  The  machinery  was  sold  to  Messrs.  Reis,  Brown,  Ber- 
ger,  and  James  Ward,  and  was  removed  to  Niles,  Ohio. 

In  the  United  States  a  rolling  mill  is  understood  to  mean 
an  establishment  for  rolling  iron  or  steel,  and  it  may  have 
one  train  of  rolls  or  many  trains. 

Jn  1829  Allegheny  county  had  eight  rolling  mills,  using 
6,000  tons  of  blooms  and  1,500  tons  of  pig  iron,  all  brought 
from  other  localities.  In  that  year  there  were  nine  found- 
ries, which  consumed  3,500  tons  of  iron.  In  1828  the  iron 
rolled  was  3,291  tons,  in  1829  it  was  6,217  tons,  and  in  1830 
it  was  9,282  tons.  In  1831  there  were  two  steel  furnaces  at 
Pittsburgh.  Cast  iron  began  to  be  used  in  this  year  for  pil- 
lars, the  caps  and  sills  of  windows,  etc.  In  1836  there  were 
nine  rolling  mills  in  operation  and  eighteen  foundries,  en- 
gine-factories, and  machine-shops.  In  1856  there  were  at 
Pittsburgh  and  in  Allegheny  county  twenty-five  rolling  mills. 
In  1890  there  were  sixty  iron  rolling  mills  and  steel  works  in 
Allegheny  county.  The  Pittsburgh  rolling  mills  were  large- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  231 

ly  supplied  from,  the  first  with  blooms  from  the  Juniata  val- 
ley and  with  pig  iron  from  nearer  localities,  but  large  quan- 
tities of  blooms  were  also  brought  to.  Pittsburgh  from  Ohio, 
Kentucky,  and  Tennessee.  Allegheny  county  has  long  enjoy- 
ed the  reputation  of  leading  all  other  iron  districts  in  the 
country  in  the  production  of  rolled  iron  and  the  various 
kinds  of  steel.  Of  its  enterprise  in  the  manufacture  of  steel 
we  will  speak  in  subsequent  chapters. 

Clinton  furnace,  built  in  1859  by  Graff,  Bennett  &  Co., 
and  blown  in  on  the  last  Monday  of  October  in  that  year, 
was  the  first  furnace  built  in  Allegheny  county  after  the  aban- 
donment in  1794  of  George  Anshutz's  furnace  at  Shady  Side, 
a  surprisingly  long  interval  if  we  consider  the  prominence  of 
this  great  iron  centre  in  the  manufacture  of  rolled  iron  after 
its  second  large  rolling  mill,  the  Union,  was  built  in  1819. 
This  furnace  was  built  to  use  coke  made  from  coal  from  the 
Pittsburgh .  vein,  but  it  did  not  prove  to  be  a  good  furnace 
fuel,  and  coke  from  the  Connellsville  region  was  soon  substi- 
tuted with  great  success.  This  success  led  to  the  building  of 
other  coke  furnaces  at  Pittsburgh  and  in  Allegheny  county. 
Their  aggregate  production  of  pig  iron  in  1883  was  greater 
than  that  of  any  other  district  in  the  United  States,  not  ex- 
cepting the  celebrated  Lehigh  valley  district  in  Pennsylvania. 
This  position  of  supremacy  has  since  been  maintained.  The 
production  of  pig  iron  by  Allegheny  county  in  1890  was 
greater  than  that  of  any  State  in  the  Union,  Pennsylvania 
excepted.  It  amounted  to  1,337,309  gross  tons.  Iron  ore 
for  the  furnaces  of  this  county  is  chiefly  obtained  from  the 
Lake  Superior  region,  but  some  other  native  ores  are  used 
and  also  considerable  quantities  of  foreign  ores.  About 
twenty  years  ago  Missouri  ores  were  used  in  large  quantities. 
There  are  now  twenty-six  coke  furnaces  in  this  county,  and 
many  of  them  are  among  the  best  in  the  country.  The 
best  blast-furnace  record  that  has  been  made  in  this  or  any 
other  country  must  be  credited  to  the  furnaces  connected 
with  the  Edgar  Thomson  steel  works  at  Braddock,  Allegheny 
county.  We  will  refer  to  this  record  hereafter. 

IN  1810  there  were  in  Pennsylvania  44  blast  furnaces,  78 
forges,  4  bloomaries,  18  rolling  and  slitting  mills,  6  air  fur- 


232  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

naces,  50  trip-hammers,  5  steel  furnaces,  and  175  naileries. 
The  furnaces  produced  26,878  gross  tons  of  "  cast  iron,"  the 
product  of  the  whole  country,  with  153  blast  and  air  fur- 
naces, "being  53,908  tons.  Of  the  5  steel  furnaces  in  Pennsyl- 
vania one  was  in  Philadelphia  city  and  one  each  in  Phila- 
delphia, Lancaster,  Dauphin,  and  Fayette  counties,  and  their 
product  was  531  tons  of  steel,  valued  at  $81,147.  In  1840 
there  were  213  furnaces  in  Pennsylvania  and  169  forges  and 
rolling  mills.  In  1850  there  were  298  furnaces,  121  forges, 
6  bloomaries,  and  79  rolling  mills.  Of  the  furnaces  exist- 
ing in  1850  nearly  all  were  charcoal  furnaces,  only  57  being 
anthracite  and  11  bituminous  coal  and  coke  furnaces.  The 
production  of  the  furnaces  in  1849  was  253,035  tons ;  of  the 
bloomaries,  335  tons ;  of  the  forges,  28,495  tons ;  and  of  the 
rolling  mills,  108,358  tons. 

The  charcoal  iron  industry  of  Pennsylvania  still  exists, 
but  its  glory  has  departed.  About  1840  a  revolution  was 
created  in  the  iron  industry  of  the  country  by  the  introduc- 
tion of  bituminous  and  anthracite  coal  in  the  blast  furnace, 
and  soon  afterwards  the  manufacture  of  charcoal  iron  in 
Pennsylvania  furnaces  commenced  to  decline.  About  1830 
rolling  mills  in  many  parts  of  the  State  began  to  puddle 
iron  extensively,  and  this  innovation  drove  out  of  existence 
many  charcoal  forges  which  had  been  employed  in  produc- 
ing blooms  for  rolling  mills  as  well  as  to  be  reduced  to  bar 
iron  under  their  own  hammers.  Most  of  the  charcoal  fur- 
naces and  forges  and  all  of  the  primitive  charcoal  bloom- 
aries have  been  abandoned. 

Since  about  the  middle  of  the  last  century  Pennsylvania 
has  been  noted  as  the  leading  iron  and  steel  making  State  in 
the  Union.  For  many  years  it  has  produced  one-half  of  all 
the  pig  iron,  one-half  of  all  the  rolled  iron,  and  more  than 
one-half  of  all  the  steel  made  in  the  United  States.  In  1890 
•it  made  48  per  cent,  of  the  large  product  of  pig  iron  in  that 
year  ;  61  per  cent,  of  the  Bessemer  steel  ingots  produced  ;  70 
per  cent,  of  the  Bessemer  steel  rails  produced  ;  81  per  cent, 
of  the  open-hearth  steel  produced ;  75  per  cent,  of  the  cru- 
cible steel  produced ;  52  per  cent,  of  the  rolled  iron  produc- 
ed ;  and  54  per  cent,  of  the  product  of  rolled  steel  other  than 
steel  rails. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  233 

CHAPTER  XXI. 
THE  EARLY  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  DELAWARE. 

IN  the  Colonial  Records  of  Pennsylvania,  volume  L,  page 
115,  mention  is  made  of  one  James  Bowie,  who  was  "  living 
near  iron  hill  about  eight  miles  distance  from  New  Castle," 
Delaware,  in  1684.  In  Oldmixon's  British  Empire  in  Amer- 
ica, edition  of  1708,  in  referring  to  New  Castle  county,  then  in 
Pennsylvania  l)ut  now  in  Delaware,  it  is  said  that  there  is  a 
place  in  the  county  "  called  iron  hill,  from  the  iron  ore  found 
there,"  but  the  existence  of  an  "iron  mill"  to  use  the  ore  is 
expressly  denied.  This  iron  hill  is  undoubtedly  the  one  re- 
ferred to  in  the  Colonial  Records  as  having  been  known  as 
early  as  1684.  It  may  be  that  it  was  in  the  neighborhood 
of  this  deposit  where  Richard  Frame's  forty  pounds  of  iron 
were  made  as  early  as  1692,  and  which  he  credits  to  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  that  it  was  the  iron  ore -in  this  hill  to  which  Ga- 
briel Thomas  referred  in  1698  in  his  description  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, the  territory  now  embraced  in  the  State  of  Delaware 
forming  an  integral  part  of  Penn's  province  down  to  a  much 
later  date  than  the  one  last  mentioned. 

Mr.  Hungerford  says  that  iron  hill,  in  Pencader  hundred, 
in  New  Castle  county,  Delaware,  was  called  by  that  name  as 
early  as  May,  1661,  and  that  iron  ore  was  discovered  at  that 
place  by  the  Dutch  soon  after  their  occupancy  of  the  terri- 
tory in  1655,  if  not  earlier  by  the  Swedes.  He  further  in- 
forms us  that  in  April,  1661,  four  Englishmen  were  murdered 
by  Indians  while  on  their  way  from  New  Amstel  (now  New 
Castle)  to  the  head  of  Chesapeake  bay.  The  affair  caused  a 
correspondence  between  Vice-Director  William  Beekman,  of 
the  Dutch  West  India  colony,  then  at  Fort  Altena,  (Wilming- 
ton,) and  Vice-Director  Alexander  De  Hinijossa,  of  the  colo- 
ny of  the  City  of  Amsterdam,  at  New  Amstel,  on  one  side, 
and  the  Director-General,  Petrus  Stuyvesant,  upon  the  other. 
Beekman  recites  the  fact  in  his  letter  dated  May  27th,  but 
does  not  locate  the  place.  De  Hinijossa,  under  date  of  May 
15th,  says  it  occurred  at  "Morettica,  on  iron  hill." 


£34  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

Mrs.  James  says  that  on  the  24th  of  September,  1717, 
Sir  William  Keith,  Governor  of  Pennsylvania,  "  wrote  to  the 
Board  of  Trade  in  London  that  he  had  found  great  plenty 
of  iron  ore  in  Pennsylvania,"  and  Bishop  says  that  "  Sir  Will- 
iam Keith  had  iron  works  in  New  Castle  county,  Delaware, 
erected  previous  to  1730,  and  probably  during  his  adminis- 
tration from  1717  to  1726."  Emanuel  Swedenborg,  in  his 
De  Ferro,  printed  in  1734,  gives  some  particulars  of  the  early 
iron  works  in  Delaware,  which  he  derived  from  the  Swedish 
settlers  on  the  Delaware  river.  He  mentions  smelting  works 
on  the  Christiana  river,  built  by  Sir  William  Keith  during 
the  latter  part  of  his  administration,  which  produced  large 
quantities  of  iron  in  the  first  two  years  of  their  existence 
but  were  abandoned  the  next  year  owing  to  the  difficulty 
of  smelting  the  ore.  He  also  mentions  another  enterprise, 
about  a  mile  distant  from  the  other  works.  Mr.  Hunger- 
ford  says  that  this  last  enterprise  was  on  the  south  bank  of 
Christiana  creek,  north  of  iron  hill,  and  was  called  Abbington 
furnace.  It  was  built  by  a  company  in  1726  or  1727.  A 
forge  was  built  near  this  furnace  before  1734,  when  it  and  an 
eighth  part  of  the  furnace  were  owned  by  Samuel  James.  A 
bloomary,  located  near  St.  James's  church,  on  the  Huitleer 
river,  (White  Clay  creek,)  is  mentioned  by  Swedenborg,  the 
owner  being  John  Ball,  who  was  a  blacksmith.  We  give 
herewith  a  translation  of  Swedenborg's  whole  reference  to  the 
early  iron  works  in  Delaware,  reminding  the  reader  that  the 
volume  from  which  it  is  taken  was  printed  in  1734. 

About  nine  years  ago  works  for  smelting  iron  were  constructed  by 
the  Governor  of  the  Province,  Sir  William  Keith,  on  the  banks  of  the  river 
Christiana.  For  the  first  two  years  of  their  existence  they  produced  a  suf- 
ficient quantity  of  iron ;  but  during  the  third  year,  because  the  ore  failed, 
they  were  abandoned.  It  is  asserted  that  the  ore  of  this  region  contains 
much  iron,  but  that  it  is  refractory,  and  without  limestone  as  a  flux  (of 
which  there  is  little  to  be  had)  can  not  be  smelted.  At  the  distance  of  one 
mile  from  that  place  there  is  another  smelting  works  erected,  but  it  is  said 
that,  on  account  of  the  exceeding  dryness  of  the  ore  and  scarcity  of  lime- 
stone, smelting  has  not  been  undertaken  there ;  but  the  ore  is  now  reduced 
by  itself  in  hearths,  small  bars,  or  reworked  crude  iron,  being  produced  at 
pleasure.  In  the  neighborhood,  on  the  river  Huitleer,  are  similar  small 
works  near  the  church  of  St.  James,  and  owned  by  Mr.  John  Ball,  where 
also  from  ore,  or  crude  iron,  bars  for  blacksmith's  work,  or  forgings,  are  pro- 
duced by  successive  reheatings,  but  these  works  have  but  one  hearth. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  235 

Mr.  Hungerford  says  that  Sir  William  Keith  commenced 
purchasing  lands  in  Delaware  in  1722  and  made  his  last  pur- 
chase in  1726,  in  which  year  seven  tracts  of  land,  embracing 
in  all  1,260  acres,  and  lying  in  the  hundreds  of  Pencader, 
White  Clay,  Mill  Creek,  and  Christiana,  were  all  sold  by  Sir 
William  to  John  England,  then  manager  of  Principio  fur- 
nace, in  Maryland. 

We  have  seen  an  autograph  legal  opinion  of  Andrew 
Hamilton,  not  published,  dated  Philadelphia,  March  6,  1730, 
from  which  we  learn  that  Sir  William  Keith  agreed  to  con- 
vey to  John  England  "  sundry  lands  and  tenements  in  New 
Castle  county,  on  Dellaware,  upon  which  lands  there  was  a 
small  iron  forge  and  supposed  to  be  a  great  quantity  of  iron 
ore."  It  was  afterwards  ascertained,  however,  that  the  ore 
referred  to  was  on  the  land  of  John  Evans  and  not  on  Sir 
William's  lands,  but  the  existence  of  a  forge  on  the  lands  of 
the  latter  is  not  called  in  question  by  the  author  of  the  opin- 
ion. Undoubtedly  Sir  William  owned  a  forge,  as  appears 
from  the  opinion,  and  it  probably  succeeded  a  furnace. 

In  a  biographical  and  critical  sketch  of  Sir  William 
Keith,  written  by  Charles  P.  Keith,  and  published  in  the 
Pennsylvania  Magazine  of  History  and  Biography  for  1888,  we 
find  the  following  reference  to  Sir  William's  iron  enterprises 
in  Delaware :  "  The  Just  and  Plain  Vindication  of  Sir  William 
Keith,  published  about  the  middle  of  1726,  says  that  he  had 
laid  out  not  only  two  thousand  pounds  on  a  farm,  but 
1 4,000?.  in  another  Place ;  where,  by  Erecting  an  Iron-Work, 
it  is  improved  to  near  double  the  prime  Cost,  and  this  last 
Estate  Sir  William  all  along  designed  as  a  Security  to  his 
Creditors,  until  they  were  fully  satisfy'd  and  paid ; '  while  the 
More  Just  Vindication  answers  that  scarcely  any  one  would 
take  the  works  as  a  gift,  if  obliged  to  maintain  them."  Sir 
William's  "  iron  work  "  was  probably  built  between  1722  and 
1726,  as  it  was  in  the  year  first  mentioned  when  he  appears 
to  have  commenced  to  purchase  lands  in  Delaware. 

The  exact  location  of  Sir  William  Keith's  iron  enterprise, 
which  was  probably  the  first  of  its  kind  in  Delaware,  we  have 
been  unable  to  determine,  but  it  is  exceedingly  probable  that 
it  was  located  near  iron  hill.  That  it  was  on  the  Christiana 
river  is  made  certain  by  Swedenborg's  exact  statement.  The 


236  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Christiana  skirts  the  foot  of  iron  hill.  It  will  be  remembered 
that,  on  the  24th  of  September,  1717,  Sir  William  wrote  to 
the  Board  of  Trade  in  London  that  he  had  found  "  great 
plenty  of  iron  ore  "  in  Pennsylvania,  the  reference  being  most 
probably  to  New  Castle  county,  Delaware,  where  Sir  William 
afterwards  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  iron.  He  did  not 
engage  in  that  manufacture  at  any  other  place  in  Pennsylva- 
nia or  Delaware.  There  is  not  any  "  great  plenty  of  iron  ore  " 
anywhere  else  in  New  Castle  county  than  at  iron  hill. 

There  is  a  local  tradition  that  there  was  a  furnace  at  the 
foot  of  iron  hill  about  1730.  In  the  gable  of  an  old  Baptist 
church  near  iron  hill  is  a  cast-iron  plate,  dated  1746,  which 
was  probably  cast  at  Abbington  furnace.  In  the  edition  of 
Oldmixon  for  1741  the  author  says  that  "  between  Brandy- 
wine  and  Christiana  is  an  iron  mill."  This  reference  must 
be  to  Abbington  furnace.  The  original  members  of  the  com- 
pany which  built  this  furnace  are  given  by  Mr.  Hungerford 
as  follows  from  a  deed  dated  October  27, 1727,  at  which  time 
it  is  stated  in  the  deed  that  the  furnace  had  been  completed : 
"  Samuel  James,  of  Penkadder  hundred,  in  ye  county  of  New 
Castell,  upon  Deleware,  millwright,  of  the  first  part;  Reece 
Jones,  of  Penkadder  hundred,  tanner,  of  the  second  part; 
Samuel  Nutt,  of  Chester  county,  Pennsylvania,  ironmonger, 
of  the  third  part;  Evan  Owen,  of  the  city  of  Philadelphia, 
merchant,  of  the  fourth  part ;  William  Branson,  of  Philadel- 
phia, merchant,  of  the  fifth  part ;  Thomas  Rutter,  of  the 
same  city,  smith,  of  the  sixth  part ;  John  Rutter,  of  the  same 
city,  smith,  of  the  seventh  part ;  and  Caspar  Wistar,  of  Phil- 
adelphia, brass-button  maker,  of  the  eighth  part."  No  men- 
tion is  made  of  Abbington  furnace  or  the  forge  of  Samuel 
James  after  1768.  Both  furnace  and  forge  are  often  referred 
to  as  the  Abbington  iron  works.  The  furnace  stood  on  the 
south  bank  of  Christiana  creek  near  the  Anabaptist  meeting- 
house, and  the  forge  stood,  on  land  now  owned  by  the  Cooch 
brothers  and  above  the  Cooch  mill.  The  furnace  was  situ- 
ated on  land  now  owned  by  William  McConaughey. 

Mr.  Hungerford  informs  us  that  one  John  Ball  owned  a 
tract  of  land  in  Mill  Creek  hundred,  containing  400  acres, 
called  "New  Design,"  which  in  a  deed  is  described  as  lying 
on  the  west  side  of  a  branch  of  White  Clay  creek,  called  Mill 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  237 

creek,  between  Mill  creek  and  William  Ball's  land,  and  he 
also  owned  100  acres  of  land  adjoining.  St.  James's  church 
is  on  the  east  side  of  Mill  creek,  nearly  opposite  the  tract 
"New  Design,"  upon  which  the  Balls  lived.  Iron  hill  was 
about  six  or  seven  miles  distant.  The  ore  for  John  Ball's 
bloomary  was  doubtless  hauled  from  iron  hill. 

The  iron  hill  to  which  reference  has  above  been  made  is 
situated  about  three  miles  south  of  Newark,  near  the  Mary- 
land line  and  in  sight  of  Christiana  creek.  Ore  taken  from 
this  place  has  been  used  at  Principio  furnace,  in  Cecil  county, 
Maryland,  since  1847.  This  ore  has  also  been  used  at  some 
furnaces  in  Pennsylvania.  Previous  to  1847  the  mines  had 
been  worked  but  little.  Between  1832  and  1847  some  ore  was 
mined  here  and  taken  to  a  furnace  in  New  Jersey. 

Bishop  says  that  in  Sussex  county,  in  the  southern  part 
of  Delaware,  "where  bog  ore  in  the  shape  of  a  very  pure 
hydrate,  yielding  from  55  to  66  per  cent,  of  iron,  exists  in 
large  beds  in  the  vicinity  of  Georgetown  and  on  the  branch- 
es of  the  Nanticoke,  and  Indian  rivers,  the  manufacture  of 
iron  and  castings  was  carried  on  before  the  Revolution  to 
a  considerable  extent.  The  compact  hydrated  peroxide  of 
some  of  these  beds  has,  since  the  early  part  of  this  century, 
been  raised  in  quantities  for  exportation,  and  the  local  produc- 
tion of  iron  is  consequently  less  than  it  might  have  been." 
Tench  Coxe,  in  his  report  on  The  Arts  and  Manufactures  of  the 
United  States  in  1810,  mentions  five  forges  in  Sussex  county, 
which  produced  in  that  year  215  tons  of  iron,  but  he  makes 
no  reference  to  a  blast  furnace  in  the  whole  State.  Bog  ore 
from  near  Milton,  in  Sussex  county,  was  at  one  time  taken 
to  Millville,  New  Jersey,  to  be  smelted  in  a  furnace  at  that 
place  which  was  built  in  1815.  Sussex  ore  has  also  been 
shipped  to  other  places. 

In  1763  a  company,  under  the  leadership  of  Colonel 
Joseph  Vaughan,  built  a  furnace  near  Concord,  in  Sussex 
county,  on  Deep  creek,  a  tributary  of  Nanticoke  river,  to 
which  a  forge  on  Nanticoke  river  was  added  in  1769.  They 
were  known  as  the  Deep  Creek  iron  works,  the  furnace  be- 
ing known  as  Deep  Creek  furnace  and  the  forge  as  Nanti- 
coke forge.  The  company  had  a  stone  wharf  at  the  head 
of  Nanticoke  river,  and  shipped  its  iron  direct  to  England. 


238  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

The  iron  was  called  "Old  Meadow."  "The  stone  wharf  is 
there  yet,"  said  Mr.  Francis  Vincent,  of  Wilmington,  in  a  let- 
ter we  received  from  him  a  few  years  ago.  The  Revolution- 
ary war  practically  ended  these  enterprises.  Colonel  Vaughan 
commanded  one  of  the  Delaware  regiments  during  the  Rev- 
olution. Another  furnace  at  Concord,  also  located  on  Deep 
creek,  was  built  by  a  company  in  1764,  the  furnace  being 
known  as  Pine  Grove.  This  furnace  was  abandoned  soon 
after  the  close  of  the  Revolution.  Unity  forge,  on  the  main 
branch  of  Nanticoke  river,  was  built  as  early  as  1771  and 
continued  in  operation  as  late  as  1816. 

As  late  as  1850  there  was  a  forge  on  Gravelly  branch,  in 
Nanticoke  hundred,  in  Sussex  county,  known  as  Collins's 
forge,  which  made  bar  iron  in  large  quantities  from  iron  ore 
from  lands  farther  east  for  the  Baltimore  and  Philadelphia 
markets.  It  was  built  about  1808  by  John  Collins,  who  was 
afterwards  Governor  of  Delaware.  In  1808  Shadrach  Elliot 
built  a  forge  at  the  mouth  of  Gravelly  branch  and  at  the 
upper  end  of  the  Middleford  pond.  In  a»  deed  for  part  of  the 
land,  dated  August  4,  1812,  the  forge  is  mentioned  as  "  Grav- 
elly Delight  forge."  It  probably  went  out  of  operation  be- 
tween 1816 -and  1820.  In  1807  Josiah  Polk  was  in  possession 
of  a  forge  which  had  been  erected  some  time  before  on  the 
south  side  of  Broad  creek,  about  a  mile  and  a  half  east  of 
Laurel,  in  Sussex  county.  It  was  operated  by  him  until  his 
death,  which  occurred  about  1840,  and  was  then  abandoned. 

We  are  indebted  to  Mr.  Hungerford  for  exact  information 
concerning  all  of  the  above-mentioned  early  Sussex  county 
iron  works,  not  one  of  which  now  remains. 

About  1820,  as  we  were  informed  in  his  lifetime  by 
Hon.  Caleb  S.  Layton,  of  Sussex  county,  a  blast  furnace  was 
established  at  Millsborough,  on  Indian  river,  about  eight 
miles  south  of  Georgetown,  by  Colonel  William  D.  Waples 
and  others.  In  connection  with  this  furnace  was  a  foundry. 
An  interest  in  the  furnace  was  purchased  in  1822  by  Hon. 
Samuel  G.  Wright,  of  New  Jersey,  and  in  1830  his  son, 
Colonel  Gardiner  H.  Wright,  obtained  an  interest,  and  after- 
wards operated  the  furnace  until  1836,  when  it  went  out 
of  blast.  The  foundry  continued  in  operation  until  1879. 
In  1859  Lesley  stated  that  "Millsborough  charcoal  furnace, 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  239 

owned  by  Gardiner  H.  Wright,  of  Millsborough,  Sussex 
county,  Delaware,  is  the  only  furnace  in  the  State,  and  has 
not  made  iron  for  ten  years.  A  cupola  furnace  is  in  activity 
beside  it."  Mr.  Vincent  informed  us  that  the  castings  for  the 
Eastern  Penitentiary  of  Pennsylvania  and  for  Moyamensing 
Prison,  and  the  iron  railing  which  once  surrounded  Inde- 
pendence Square,  in  Philadelphia,  were  cast  at  Millsborough 
furnace;  we  presume  at  the  "  cupola  furnace."  In  1828  and 
in  the  two  succeeding  years  Millsborough  furnace  and  found- 
ry produced  450  tons  of  pig  iron  and  350  tons  of  castings. 

A  rolling  mill  near  Wilmington,  Delaware,  existing  and 
in  operation  in  1787  or  1788,  has  already  been  referred  to  in 
the  chapter  relating  to  New  York.  This  mill  then  rolled 
Swedish  and  Russia  iron  for  the  use  of  a  New  York  cut-nail 
factory.  It  occupied  the  site  of  the  present  Hagley  powder 
works.  It  was  built  before  1783  and  was  abandoned  about 
1812. 

Tench  Coxe  says  that  in  1810  there  were  three  rolling  and 
slitting  mills  in  New  Castle  county.  Lesley  stated  in  1859 
that  the  Delaware  iron  works,  located  five  miles  northwest  of 
Wilmington,  then  owned  by  Alan  Wood,  of  Philadelphia,  and 
built  in  1812,  "  began  to  manufacture  sheet  iron  thirty  years 
ago  in  what  had  been  a  nail-plate  works.  At  that  time  only 
Townsend  in  New  Jersey  made  sheet  iron."  Marshall's  roll- 
ing mill,  on  Red  Clay  creek,  two  miles  west  of  Newport,  was 
built  in  1836  by  Caleb  and  John  Marshall,  to  roll  sheet  iron. 
The  Wilmington  rolling  mill,  near  Wilmington,  was  built  in 
1845,  and  the  Diamond  State  rolling  mill,  at  Wilmington,  was 
built  in  1853.  These  were  the  only  rolling  mills  existing  in 
Delaware  in  1859.  Others  have  since  been  built.  Thft  busi- 
ness of  iron  shipbuilding  has  been  added  to  the  iron  indus- 
try of  Delaware  within  the  last  few  years.  There  is  now 
neither  a  blast  furnace  nor  a  forge  nor  a  bloomary  remain- 
ing in  the  State. 


240  THE    MANUFACTURE    OP 

/ 

CHAPTER  XXII. 
EAELY  IRON   ENTERPRISES  IN   MARYLAND. 

IN  his  Report  on  the  Manufacture  of  Iron,  addressed  to  the 
Governor  of  Maryland  in  1840,  Alexander  gives  1715  as  the 
"  epoch  of  furnaces  in  Mary  land,  Virginia,  and  Pennsylvania." 
This  statement  is  not  strictly  accurate  except  in  regard  to 
Virginia.  Pennsylvania's  first  furnace  was  not  built  until 
about  1720  ;  certainly  not  before  that  year.  Maryland  had  no 
iron  enterprises  but  a  bloomary  or  two  until  1724,  when  its 
first  furnace  was  built.  Scrivenor  says  that  in  1718  "  Mary- 
land and  Virginia  "  exported  to  England  3  tons  and  7  cwt. 
of  bar  iron,  upon  which  the  mother  country  collected  a  duty 
of  £6  19s.  Id.  This  bar  iron  could  only  have  been  made 
in  Maryland,  as  Virginia  had  no  forges  at  this  time. 

In  1719  the  general  assembly  of  Maryland  passed  an  act 
"authorizing  100  acres  of  land  to  belaid  off  to  any  who 
would  set  up  furnaces  and  forges  in  the  province."  Other 
inducements  were  offered  in  1721  and  subsequently  to  those 
who  would  engage  in  the  manufacture  of  iron.  The  pre- 
amble to  the  act  of  1719  recites  that  "  there  are  very  great 
conveniences  of  carrying  on  iron  works  within  this  province, 
which  have  not  hitherto  been  embraced  for  want  of  proper 
encouragement  to  some  first  undertakers"  which  clearly  im- 
plies that  iron  enterprises  had  already  been  undertaken  in 
Maryland  but  were  not  then  in  operation.  As  a  result  of 
the  encouragement  given  by  the  general  assembly  authentic 
reports  show  that  in  1749  and  again  in  1756  there  were  eight 
furnaces  and  nine  forges  in  Maryland,  and  that  on  the  21st 
of  December,  1761,  there  were  eight  furnaces,  making  about 
2,500  tons  of  pig  iron  annually,  and  ten  forges,  capable  of 
making  about  600  tons  of  bar  iron  annually.  During  the 
colonial  period  Maryland  had  no  manufacturing  industry 
worthy  of  the  name  except  that  of  iron.  Tobacco-growing 
and  wheat-growing  formed  the  principal  employments  of  the 
\  people. 

The  first  iron  works  in  Maryland  were  probably  erected 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  241 

in  Cecil  county,  at  the  head  of  Chesapeake  bay.  We  sup- 
pose that  a  bloomary  at  North  East,  on  North  East  river, 
erected  previous  to  1716,  formed  the  pioneer  iron  enterprise. 
That  iron  works  were  built  at  North  East  prior  to  1716  is 
proved  by  a  deed  dated  in  that  year,  in  which  Robert  Dutton 
conveyed  a  flour  mill  near  the  "  bottom  of  the  main  falls  of 
North  East,"  and  also  fifty  acres  of  land,  to  Richard  Bennett 
for  £100  in  silver  money.  In  this  deed  "  iron  works "  are 
mentioned  as  among  the  appurtenances  which  were  convey- 
ed by  it.  We  quote  from  Johnston's  History  of  Cecil  County. 
These  works  could  have  embraced  only  a  bloomary,  as  there 
was  not  at  this  time  a  blast  furnace,  to  supply  a  forge  with 
pig  iron,  in  either  Maryland  or  Pennsylvania,  and  the  first 
blast  furnace  in  Virginia  had  just  been  built.  The  works 
were  probably  not  then  active. 

Johnston  says  that  in  1722  Stephen  Onion  &  Co.  leased 
two  tracts  of  land,  called  Vulcan's  Rest  and  Vulcan's  Trial, 
the  first  of  which  joined  Dutton's  mill-dam  on  the  south, 
and  also  another  tract  in  Susquehanna  Manor  called  Diffi- 
dence, lying  on  the  north  side  of  the  North  East  river. 

About  the  time  of  the  passage  of  the  act  of  1719,  above 
alluded  to,  Joseph  Farmer,  an  ironmaster,  of  England,  came 
to  Maryland  in  behalf  of  himself  and  other  adventurers  in 
the  manufacture  of  iron.  Whether  he  was  interested  in  the 
works  at  North  East  or  not  can  not  now  be  learned.  In  1722 
Mr.  Farmer  and  his  associates,  afterwards  known  as  the 
Principio  Company,  commenced  the  erection  of  a  furnace  on 
Talbot's  manor,  in  fcecil  county,  near  the  mouth  of  Principio 
creek,  which  empties  into  Chesapeake  bay  about  six  miles 
distant  from  the  town  of  North  East.  Johnston  says  that  Mr. 
Farmer's  associates  at  this  time  embraced  Stephen  Onion, 
Joshua  Gee,  William  Russell,  and  John  Ruston.  He  thinks 
that  the  North  East  company,  known  as  Stephen  Onion  & 
Co.,  was  consolidated  with  the  Principio  Company.  The  lat- 
ter company  was  at  first  styled  Joseph  Farmer  &  Co.  Af- 
ter having  made  some  progress  in  the  erection  of  the  fur- 
nace Farmer  returned  to  England,  probably  early  in  1722, 
leaving  the  enterprise  in  charge  of  Stephen  Onion  as  gen- 
eral manager.  A  son  of  Joshua  Gee  and  Thomas  Russell, 
a  son  of  William  Russell,  were  at  Principio  at  this  time. 


242  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

At  the  beginning  of  1723  the  Principio  Company  was 
composed  of  William  Chetwynd,  of  Grindon,  in  Warwickshire, 
a  gentleman  of  wealth  and  position ;  Joshua  Gee,  a  merchant 
of  London ;  William  Russell,  an  ironmaster  of  Birmingham ; 
John  England,  an  ironmaster  of  Staffordshire ;  John  Huston, 
and  Joseph  Farmer.  It  is  very  clear  that  the  company  had 
been  enlarged,  as  the  result  of  glowing  representations  made 
by  Farmer.  Several  of  the  members,  including  Joshua  Gee 
and  John  England,  were  members  of  the  Society  of  Friends. 
William  Chetwynd  was  the  leading  capitalist  of  the  company. 
Walter  Chetwynd  also  became  a  member  as  early  as  1725. 
In  consequence  of  the  mismanagement  of  Stephen  Onion  it 
was  at  this  time  decided  to  put  John  England,  who  resided 
at  or  near  Tamworth,  in  immediate  charge  of  the  Principio 
enterprise,  with  entire  control  of  the  company's  operations  in 
America.  Accordingly,  in  April,  1723,  John  England  and  his 
wife  sailed  from  Bristol  for  Philadelphia,  which  place  they 
reached  after  a  passage  of  seven  weeks  and  one  day.  A  few 
days  afterwards  they  arrived  at  Principio. 

On  June  25th  of  the  same  year  Mr.  England  wrote  to  Mr. 
Farmer  a  long  letter  of  complaint  concerning  the  condition 
in  which  he  found  the  affairs  of  the  company  at  Principio. 
He  says  :  "  When  I  came  I  found  I  think  everything  contra- 
ry to  my  expectations  on  thy  information;  for  as  to  ye  fur- 
nace, which,  according  to  thy  information  when  at  London, 
was  very  near  ready  to  blow,  is  but  18  inches  above  ye  second 
couplings,  and  ye  inner  wall  is  but  6  feet  high.  .  .  Neither 
did  I  think  thee  wouldest  have  been  guilty  of  ordering  a  fur- 
nace to  have  been  built  until  thee  hadst  been  sure  of  mine, 
that  which  was  good  and  enough  of  it  for  perpetuity ;  for  I 
have  been  at  Patapsco,  Bush  river,  and  North  East,  and  seen 
all  ye  mine  along  shore  in  every  place,  and  can  not  find  any 
more  than  will  serve  for  one  blast,  if  that.  .  .  And  when  I 
treated  with  thee  I  feared  interest  was  in  ye  bottom,  which 
now  I  find  true.  .  .  As  to  stock  of  both  cole  and  mine,  there 
may  be  about  two  months'  stock  in  of  both  cole  and  mine, 
and  when  there  will  be  a  stock  for  a  blast  I  can  not  tell,  cole 
lying  three  miles  from  ye  furnace  and  stone  at  such  a  dis- 
tance. .  .  You  may  assure  yourselves  here  hath  been  and  is 
such  ruin  as  I  never  saw."  The  letter  dwelt  at  length  upon 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  243 

the  unhealthiness  of  Principle).  It  may  here  be  stated  that 
his  wife  died  in  this  year  and  that  he  was  himself  seized 
with  a  severe  illness.  /The  letter  further  dwelt  upon  the  in- 
efficiency, drunkenness,  and  mutinous  temper  of  the  work- 
men, many  of  whom  appear  to  have  been  convicts  from  Eng- 
land, while  others  were  "  redemptioners  "  from  various  Euro- 
pean countries!)  After  stating  that  his  disgust  was  at  first  so 
great  that  he  had  thought  of  immediately  returning  to  Eng- 
land he  adds :  "  I  concluded  to  stay  and  set  up  a  little  forge 
to  try  ye  iron  if  ever  ye  furnace  runs  any  mettle."  This  let- 
ter was  intended  to  be  seen  by  other  members  of  the  com- 
pany, to  some  of  whom  similar  letters  were  written  on  the 
same  day. 

Subsequent  letters  from  John  England  to  various  members 
of  the  company  are  largely  devoted  to  the  narration  of  other 
difficulties  with  which  he  had  to  contend,  chief  of  which  was 
the  financial  and  other  demoralization  produced  by  the  mis- 
management of  the  company's  affairs  by  Stephen  Onion.  At 
the  close  of  the  year  Onion,  who  had  been  retained  as  clerk, 
was  dismissed,  and  after  that  event  Mr.  England  appears  to 
have  had  less  trouble. 

Stephen  Onion  had  made  false  representations  in  1722  of 
the  progress  that  had  been  made  in  building  the  furnace.  On 
the  llth  of  August  of  that  year  he  wrote  to  the  company 
as  follows :  "  We  hope  we  shall  finish  the  stack  of  the  fur- 
nace, casting-house,  and  bridge  ditto  in  a  month  more.  The 
colly ers  are  at  work,  and  hope  to  fiave  in  by  Christmas  400 
load  of  cole."  Of  the  actual  progress  made  in  building  the 
furnace  down  to  John  England's  arrival  in  1723  we  have 
already  been  informed  in  that  gentleman's  letters.  In  1724 
Stephen  Onion  and  Thomas  Russell  sailed  from  New  Castle 
for  Great  Britain  in  the  same  ship  with  Benjamin  Franklin, 
who  says  in  his  autobiography  that  they  were  "masters  of 
an  iron  work  in  Maryland  "  and  had  engaged  "  the  great  cab- 
in." Franklin  would  not,  of  course,  receive  from  Mr.  Onion 
a  true  account  of  the  situation  at  Principio. 

The  hopeful  temper  and  the  wise  determination  of  the 
Principio  Company  after  the  true  situation  of  its  affairs  had 
been  explained  by  Mr.  England  are  seen  in  the  following 
extracts  from  a  letter  to  him  from  the  company,  dated  at 


244  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Birmingham,  September  25,  1723 :  "  We  must  tell  you  •  it  is 
greatly  to  our  satisfaction  that  we  have  you  upon  the  place, 
in  whom  we  can  entirely  depend  that  you  will  use  your 
utmost  care  in  regulating  these  disorders  and  in  bringing 
those  refractory  workmen  to  better  discipline},.  .  We  hope 
mine  cannot  be  wanting  in  the  several  rivers.  Joseph  Farm- 
er says  that  upon  tryal  of  the  gritty  mine  in  several  places 
he  found  by  the  loadstone  as  much  iron  in  it  as  there  is 
in  most  of  the  mines  that  are  worked  in  England,  and  hope 
you  will  experience  it  to  be  so,  and  y*  when  it  is  mixed 
with  a  tougher  mine  will  make  a  good  sort  of  piggs  for  the 
English  market.  We  are  also  pleased  with  your  resolution 
to  build  a  small  forge  to  try  the  piggs.  Our  resolution  is 
steady  for  carrying  on  our  works,  for  we  think  it  would  be 
too  great  a  reflection  upon  our  conduct  to  quit  a  business 
of  this  nature  till  we  have  try'd  fully  what  may  be  done. 
.  .  We  give  you  full  power  in  everything  that  relates  to 
our  concern  under  your  care,  to  manage,  direct,  and  put 
them  forward  in  such  manner  as  you  shall  judge  for  the 
interest  of  the  company." 

On  September  12,  1723,  John  England  wrote  to  Joshua 
Gee  as  follows  :  "  I  have  been  at  .a  bloomary  with  some  of  our 
mine,  and  it  maketh  very  good  iron,  and  iron  taketh  a  very 
good  price  here,  <£40  per  ton,  and  hath  done  for  several  years 
past."  Where  this  bloomary  was  located  we  can  not  discover, 
nor  by  whom  it  was  owned,  but  it  can  easily  be  conjectured 
that  it  was  at  North  East,  where  there  were  "  iron  works  "  as 
early  as  1716,  as  has  already  been  stated. 

On  January  13,  1724,  Mr.  England  wrote  to  Joshua  Gee 
that  he  was  "going  on  with  ye  forge  dam  and  race  to  bring 
water  to  ye  forge."  In  the  same  month  he  wrote  to  Joseph 
Farmer  concerning  the  bellows  for  the  chafery  and  finery, 
which  he  desired  to  have  made  in  England.  On  the  2d  of 
April,  1724,  he  wrote  to  Joshua  Gee  that  he  had  heard  of 
"mine"  near  Annapolis,  which  he  was  going  to  see.  In  the 
same  month  he  wrote  to  William  Russell  that  "ye  furnace 
might  have  blowed  some  time  since,  but  did  not  think  it 
proper  so  to  do  without  a  better  stock  of  cole  and  mine  upon 
ye  bank ; "  also  that  the  company's  sloop  was  then  employed 
"  in  fetching  shells  to  burn  for  lime  to  build  a  great  stone 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  245 

wall  for  ye  fore  bay  of  ye  forge,"  and  that  other  preparations 
for  building  the  forge  and  its  accessories  were  then  in  active 
progress.  In  both  letters  the  hope  was  expressed  that  there 
would  soon  be  a  sufficient  supply  of  charcoal  to  keep  the 
furnace  in  blast  for  some  time,  "if  we  can  but  get  mine." 
Mr.  England  was  continually  apprehensive  of  a  scarcity  of 
iron  ore  of  good  quality,  which  he  had  not  found  in  abun- 
dance in  the  neighborhood  of  the  furnace,  but  for  which  he 
sought  diligently  in  other  places. 

We  do  not  again  hear  of  the  Principio  works  until  Sep- 
tember 15,  1725,  when  William  and  Walter  Chetwynd,  John 
Wightwick,  William  Russell,  and  Thomas  Russell  write  to 
Mr.  England  from  Grindon  a  long  and  a  very  important 
letter,  conveying  to  him  "full  and  absolute  power  over  all 
persons  employed  in  America  in  our  service,"  and  also  "  full 
power  to  act  in  all  things  with  ye  authority  as  we  ourselves 
were  we  on  ye  spot."  This  fresh  expression  of  confidence 
and  fresh  grant  of  authority  had  a  special  object  in  view,  as 
we  shall  presently  see,  but  we  are  now  interested  in  learning 
from  this  letter  that  "  our  furnace  and  forge  in  Maryland  " 
were  finished  when  it  was  written.  We  presume  that  the  fur- 
nace \vas  put  in  blast  in  1724  and  that  the  forge  was  started 
in  1725.  The  letter  says :  "  We  hear  you  have  a  good  stock 
of  pigs  on  ye  bank,  therefore  desire  you  not  to  fail  sending  us 
by  ye  first  shipping  what  pigs  you  can  spare  over  and  above 
what  can  be  worked  up  at  ye  forge  till-  ye  furnace  goes  again, 
which  we  hope  may  be  between  3  and  400  tons ;  for  tho  ye 
forge  should  be  worked  double  hand,  wrhich  we  intend  it 
shall,  it  will  hardly  work  up  above  8  tons  of  pigs  per  week, 
and  to  have  ye  overplus  of  ye  pigs  lying  dead  will  be  great 
loss  to  ye  company."  This  extract  would  seem  to  indicate 
that  the  -furnace  had  finished  its  first  blast  and  was  then  idle. 
It  was  certainly  in  blast  as  early  as  May  9,  1725,  on  which 
date  Joseph  Growdon,  of  Bensalem,  on  Neshaminy  creek, 
in  the  extreme  southern  corner  of  Bucks  county,  Pennsyl- 
vania, ordered  a  "hammer,  anvil,  and  other  iron  work  nec- 
essary for  one  single  bloomary "  to  be  cast  at  the  furnace, 
Mr.  Growdon  having  found  iron  ore  on  his  land.  (We  can  not 
learn  that  Mr.  Growdon's  bloomary  was  ever  built.)  Refer- 
ence is  made  in  the  letter  from  the  company  to  "  two  finers 


246  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

and  hammermen  "  who  had  been  sent  to  work  at  the  forge, 
and  others  were  promised  "in  a  short  time."  Mr.  England  is 
advised  to  "  sell  all  ye  iron  you  make  at  ye  forge  at  Principio  " 
in  American  markets  instead  of  sending  it  to  England  to  be 
sold.  Stephen  Onion  appears  to  have  had  sufficient  address 
to  secure  from  the  company  his  partial  restoration  to  favor, 
as  the  letter  advises  Mr.  England  that  he  had  been  appoint- 
ed clerk  of  the  furnace  and  forge,  but  subject  wholly  to  Mr. 
England's  authority,  wno  is  expressly  told  that  he  can  dis- 
charge him  if  he  does  not  give  satisfaction. 

It  will  be  observed  from  the  names  of  the  signers  of  the 
above  letter  that  the  personnel  of  the  Principio  Company 
had  undergone  some  changes.  In  a  letter  from  William  Chet- 
wynd  to  John  England,  dated  September  19th,  he  refers  to 
the  signers  of  the  above  letter  as  "  all  ye  company  except 
Mr.  Gee,"  who  was  not  wanted  but  could  not  be  shaken  off. 
The  names  of  John  Huston  and  Joseph  Farmer  do  not  ap- 
pear, thus  indicating  that  they  were  no  longer  members  of 
the  company.  In  subsequent  years  other  names  are  added. 

We  now  come  to  consider  the  particular  object  which 
the  company  had  in  view  in  writing  the  letter  of  the  15th  of 
September  to  Mr.  England.  It  appears  that  this  gentleman 
in  his  search  for  iron  ore  had  found  valuable  deposits  on  the 
land  of  Captain  Augustine  Washington,  on  the  north  side  of 
the  Rappahannock  river,  in  Virginia.  This  Captain  Wash- 
ington was  the  father  -of  George  Washington.  Mr.  England 
had  been  so  favorably  impressed  with  the  value  of  the  ore 
on  Captain  Washington's  land,  and  with  the  other  advantages 
which  the  location  offered  for  the  manufacture  of  iron,  that 
he  had  contracted  with  that  gentleman  in  the  name  of  the 
company  to  erect  a  furnace  upon  his  land,  Captain  Washing- 
ton to  have  an  interest  in  its  ownership.  The  company  be- 
ing informed  of  this  new  venture  was  so  well  satisfied  that 
all  its  members  except  Joshua  Gee  united  in  writing  to  Mr. 
England  the  letter  of  September  15th  already  referred  to.  It 
began  :  "  We  that  sign  are  met  together  at  Grindon,  and 
give  you  hereby  full  power  to  build  iron  works  on  Captain 
Washington's  land  on  ye  terms  you  have  agreed  with  him, 
and  to  use  your  own  judgment  and  discretion  in  all  things 
relating  thereto."  They  added  that  they  thought  the  loca- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  247 

tion  of  the  proposed  new  iron  works  was  "  exceedingly  well 
chosen,"  and  further  said :  "  You  will  try  ye  Captain's  mine 
in  ye  furnace  and  forge  as  soon  as  you  can."  In  this  letter 
the  company  also  approved  of  Mr.  England's  selection  of 
Ralph  Falkner  "to  be  clerk  of  ye  Virginia  furnace,"  and  au- 
thorized him  to  "buy  what  negroes  you  think  fit  and  draw 
for  ye  money."  The  letter  of  the  15th  of  September  made  a 
division  of  the  shares  of  ownership  in  the  new  venture. 

Mr.  England  at  once  proceeded  with  the  erection  of  a  fur- 
nace on  Captain  Washington's  land.  This  was  Accokeek  fur- 
nace, about  which  we  shall  have  something  further  to  say 
in  a  later  chapter  devoted  to  Vi^inia^  It  was  long  known 
as  "  England's  iron  works."  The  clerk"at  Accokeek  furnace 
when  it  was  built  was  Ralph  Falkner,  but  as  early  as  1730 
Nathaniel  Chapman  was  the  clerk.  Johnston  has  fallen  into 
an  error  in  his  History  of  Cecil  County  where  he  says:  "At 
what  time  the  Washingtons  first  became  connected  with  the 
company  is  uncertain,  but  it  was  proT5ably  in  1733."  It  was 
as  early  as  1725.  Accokeek  furnace  was  probably  put  in 
blast  in  1726. 

On  September  19,  1725,  William  Chetwynd  wrote  to  Mr. 
England  as  follows :  "  We  hope  very  soon  to  send  you  over 
workmen  sufficient  to  work  ye  forge  double  hand  and  also 
a  couple  of  castors.  You  have  full  power  to  buy  at  any  time 
40  or  50  blacks,  or  what  number  you  think  proper,  and  draw 
for  ye  money.  I  am  of  opinion  it  would  be  proper  to  secure 
more  land  near  Captain  Washington's  mine,  because  if  ye 
mine  is  so  considerable  a  one  as  you  mention  it  must  answer 
very  well  to  have  two  furnaces  there." 

In  various  letters  from  the  company  to  Mr.  England  he 
is  advised  to  send  pig  iron  freely  to  England  but  to  sell  his 
bar  iron  in  America. 

In  1730  John  England  was  still  in  charge  of  all  the  com- 
pany's iron  enterprises  in  this  country,  including  an  aban- 
doned project  on  James  river  which  had  not  been  given  tan- 
gible shape.  Stephen  Onion  was  still  the  clerk  at  Principio, 
but  the  company  was  annoyed  at  his  failure  to  settle  his  ac- 
counts. The  Principio  furnace  and  forge  and  the  Accokeek 
furnace  were  in  operation  in  this  year.  At  this  time  we  hear  ' 
nothing  of  a  forge  at  North  East. 


248  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Prior  to  1730  Mr.  England  bought  conditionally  from  Sir 
William  Keith,  as  has  been  stated  in  the  Delaware  chapter, 
"  sundry  lands  and  tenements  in  New  Castle  county,  on  Del- 
la  ware,  upon  which  lands  there  was  a  small  iron  fforge  and 
supposed  to  be  a  great  quantity  of  iron  ore."  It  was  his  in- 
tention to  erect  upon  this  land  "  works  for  carrying  on  the 
making  of  pigg  and  barr  iron  if  a  sufficient  quantity  of  iron 
ore  or  mine  could  be  found  on  ye  land."  This  project  was 
abandoned,  and  we  hear  no  more  of  his  connection  with  the. 
iron  business  in  Delaware.  In  1726  Mr.  England  had  purchas- 
ed for  himself  an  estate  on  White  Clay  creek,  in  New  Castle 
county.  He  passed  the  last  years  of  his  life  on  this  estate 
and  at  Snowdens'  iron  works  on  the  Patuxent  river,  in  Mary- 
land, in  which  he  had  an  interest.  He  died  in  1734. 

John  England  was  one  of  the  most  intelligent,  enterpris- 
ing, and  successful  of  early  American  ironmasters.  He  un- 
doubtedly built  the  first  furnace  and  the  first  forge  in  Mary- 
land. The  various  works  of  the  Principio  Company,  of  which 
he  was  so  efficient  a  manager,  were  in  the  front  rank  of  our 
colonial  iron  enterprises  for  fifty  years.  They  were  foremost 
in  the  production  of  pig  iron  and  possibly  of  bar  iron* 

For  the  facts  contained  in  the  foregoing  very  full  and 
absolutely  accurate  history  of  the  commencement  of  the 
Principio  iron  works  we  are  wholly  indebted  to  the  courtesy 
of  James  B.  England,  Esq.,  of  Philadelphia,  a  descendant  of 
Joseph  England,  (a  brother  of  John  England,)  who  placed  in 
our  hands  the  original  correspondence  between  John  Eng- 
land and  the  Principio  Company.  This  correspondence  is 
now  in  the  library  of  the  Maryland  Historical  Society,  at 
Baltimore. 

We  are  unable  to  glean  any  further  particulars  about  the 
first  works  at  North  East  than  have  already  been  given,  but 
in  an  inventory  of  the  possessions  of  the  Principio  Company 
in  May,  1723,  there  is  an  entry  which  probably  refers  to  these 
works.  This  entry  credits  the  company  with  the  purchase,  on 
July  9, 1722,  of  383  acres  of  land  "in  Lord  Baltimore's  Man- 
nor  of  North  East,  called  Vulcan's  Tryal,  Vulcan's  Enlarge- 
ment, and  Diffidence."  This  purchase  may  have  embraced 
the  North  East  "iron  works,"  upon  the  site  of  which,  at  the 
"bottom  of  the  main  falls  of  North  East,"  the  company  sub- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  249 

sequently  erected  a  new  forge,  probably  about  1735.  It  was 
in  operation  and  briskly  employed  in  1743.  The  first  entry 
in  the  inventory  mentions  the  purchase  on  October  14,  1721, 
of  8,110  acres  of  land  called  Gee  Faruson,  near  North  East. 
It  is  exceedingly  probable  that  Joseph  Farmer  and  his  as- 
sociates made  investments  at  North  East  preliminary  to  the 
manufacture  of  iron  at  that  place  before  they  decided  to 
build  the  furnace  at  Principio. 

In  Emanuel  Swedenborg's  De  Ferro,  published  in  1734, 
we  find  at  the  beginning  of  an  account  of  iron  wrorks  "  in 
Maryland  and  Pennsylvania  in  the  "West  Indies"  the  follow- 
ing reference  to  the  Principio  works :  "  There  are  several  fur- 
naces for  the  smelting  of  iron  ore,  as  well  as  works  for  the 
smelting  of  raw  iron,  not  so  very  long  since  built.  The 
principal  work  is  called  Principio,  in  the  upper  part  of  the 
province  of  Maryland,  upon  the  river  called  Principio,  from 
which  it  also  derives  its  name ;  its  water  is  said  to  fall  from 
a  height  of  25  feet.  At  this  iron  work  little  two-oared  boats 
and  little  ships  land  laden  with  iron  ore,  which  is  dug  50 
miles  from  there.  The  ore  is  said  to  be  of  a  white  or-  gray 
color,  not  unlike  the  vases  of  Holland  pottery,  containing  50 
per  cent,  of  iron.  The  iron  from  this  ore  is  said  to  carry  off 
the  palm  from  the  rest." 

Alexander  says  that  a  part  of  the  hearth  of  the  original 
Principio  furnace  was  still  standing  in  1840,  when  his  report 
was  written.  The  same  excellent  authority  says  that  on  Feb- 
ruary 5,  1734,  (old  style,)  in  pursuance  of  the  act  of  1719, 
already  referred  to,  a  precept  for  100  acres  of  land  on  North 
East  river,  forming  part  of  North  East  manor,  was  issued  to 
John  Huston,  who  had  been  one  of  the  members  of  the  Prin- 
cipio Company ;  and  he  further  says  that  on  August  31, 1736, 
this  tract  was  assigned  to  "William  Chetwynd,  of  Beddington, 
in  Surrey,  England,  who  was  probably  William  Chetwynd,  of 
Grindon.  It  was  about  this  time  that  the  company  built 
its  forge  at  North  East.  Alexander  says  that  this  forge  was 
in  his  day  "commonly  called  Russell's  forge,"  reference  being 
made  to  the  last  Russell  who  was  connected  with  it. 

In  1744  William  Black,  secretary  of  the  commissioners 
who  were  appointed  by  Governor  Gooch,  of  Virginia,  to  unite 
with  those  from  Pennsylvania  and  Maryland  to  treat  with  the 


250  THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 

Iroquois,  or  Six  Nations  of  Indians,  in  reference  to  the  lands 
west  of  the  Alleghenies,  wrote  in  his  journal,  on  May  25th, 
while  at  North  East,  in  Maryland :  "  I  must  not  forget  that 
in  the  forenoone  the  Com'rs  and  their  company  went  to  the 
Principio  iron  works,  in  order  to  view  the  curiosities  of  that 
place.  They  are  under  the  management  of  Mr.  Baxter,  a 
Virginian,  and  was  at  work  forming  barr-iron  when  we  came 
there.  For  my  part  I  was  no  judge  of  the  workmanship,  but 
I  thought  everything  appeared  to  be  in  very  good  order,  and 
they  are  allowed  to  be  as  compleat  works  as  any  on  the  con- 
tinent by  those  who  are  judges."  The  furnace  and  forge  at 
Principio  were  both  in  operation  in  that  year,  the  manager 
of  which  at  this  time  was  William  Baxter,  but  the  visit  of 
the  commissioners  may  have  been  to  the  forge  at  North  East. 

We  obtain  additional  information  concerning  the  famous 
Principio  Company  from  a  valuable  historical  essay  prepar- 
ed a  few  years  ago  by  Mr.  Henry  Whiteley,  of  Philadelphia. 

Ore  for  Principio  furnace  was  at  first  obtained  in  the 
immediate  neighborhood,  but  as  early  as  September  4,  1724, 
it  was  obtained  from  Gorsuch's  Point,  below  Canton,  on  the 
eastern  shore  of  the  Patapsco,  about  opposite  to  Fort  Mc- 
Henry.  In  1727  the  Principio  Company,  through  John  Eng- 
land, purchased  all  the  iron  ore,  "  opened  and  discovered,  or 
shut  and  not  yet  discovered,"  on  Whetstone  Point,  at  the  ex- 
tremity of  which  Fort  McHenry  now  stands,  for  £300  sterling 
and  £20  current  money  of  Maryland.  This  was  for  many 
years  one  of  its  principal  sources  of  ore  supply.  Iron  ore  has 
been  taken  from  Whetstone  Point  in  recent  years. 

Kingsbury  furnace  was  the  next  furnace  of  the  company 
after  Accokeek.  It  was  situated  on  Herring  run,  at  the  head 
of  Back  river,  in  Baltimore  county.  It  was  built  in  1744  and 
went  into  blast  in  April,  1745,  producing  at  the  first  blast, 
which  lasted  till  December  18th  of  the  same  year,  480  tons  of 
pig  iron.  The  first  four  blasts  embraced  the  period  extend- 
ing from  April  1,.1745,  to  December  26,  1751,  and  produced 
3,853  tons,  or  an  average  of  75  tons  per  working  month.  More 
than  3,300  tons  of  the  iron  were  shipped  to  the  company  in 
England.  In  1751  Lancashire  furnace  was  purchased  from 
Dr.  Charles  Carroll,  of  Annapolis.  It  was  located  near  Kings- 
bury,  on  the  west  side  of  a  branch  of  Back  river,  a  few  miles 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  251 

northeast  of  Baltimore.  The  deed  embraced  8,200  acres  of 
land,  and  was  "  signed  "  on  behalf  of  the  company  by  Law- 
rence Washington,  who  had  succeeded  to  the  interest  of  his 
father,  Captain  Washington.  Lawrence  was  a  half-brother  of 
George  Washington.  Lancashire  furnace  was  operated  by  the 
company  from  the  time  of  its  purchase  until  the  Revolution. 
It  was  its  last  acquisition  of  property  in  America.  At  the 
time  of  its  purchase  the  company  outranked  all  competitors, 
being  the  sole  proprietor  of  four  furnaces  and  two  forges,  viz. : 
Principio  furnace,  Cecil  county,  Maryland,  finished  in  1724  ; 
Principio  forge,  at  the  same  place  ;  North  East  forge,  Cecil 
county,  Maryland,  built  about  1735 ;  Accokeek  furnace, Virgin- 
ia, built  in  1726 ;  Kingsbury  furnace,  Baltimore  county,  Mary- 
land, built  in  1744 ;  Lancashire  furnace,  Baltimore  county, 
Maryland,  purchased  in  1751.  The  company  owned  slaves 
and  live  stock  in  abundance,  and  its  landed  estates  were  of 
great  extent,  amounting  to  nearly  thirty  thousand  acres,  ex- 
clusive of  the  Accokeek  lands  in  Virginia.  One-half  of  the 
pig  iron  exported  to  Great  Britain  from  this  country  before 
the  Revolution  is  said  by  Mr.  Whiteley  to  have  come  from 
the  furnaces  of  this  company^ 

After  1776  the  company  had  no  actual  control  over  any 
of  its  American  property.  Thomas  Russell,  who  had  been 
the  company's  general  manager,  continued  to  operate  the  fur- 
naces and  forges,  and  supplied  bar  iron  and  cannon  balls  in 
large  quantities  to  the  Continental  army.  In  the  Lancashire 
furnace  ledger  is  an  "  account  of  shott  made  at  Lancashire 
furnace  in  the  year  1776." 

In  1780  the  general  assembly  of  Maryland  passed  an  act 
to  seize  and  confiscate  all  British  property  within  the  State, 
and  this  was  the  formal  end  of  the  Principio  Company,  after 
an  existence  of  nearly  sixty  years.  All  the  property  of  the 
company,  with  two  exceptions,  now  passed  under  the  auction- 
eer's hammer  and  into  new  hands.  The  works  at  North  East 
were  retained  by  Thomas  Russell,  one  of  the  company  and 
a  son  of  the  first  Thomas  Russell,  who  had  cast  his  fortunes 
with  the  patriotic  cause.  "A  certain  Mr.  Washington"  owned 
a  one-twelfth  interest  in  the  possessions  of  the  company,  and 
was  also  an  adherent  of  the  patriotic  cause.  •  This  "  Mr. 
Washington"  was  probably  one  of  the  brothers  of  George 


252  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Washington ;  he  was  certainly  a  relative.  What  action  was 
taken  by  Virginia  concerning  the  possessions  of  the  com- 
pany in  that  State  we  are  not  advised,  but  Mr.  Washington's 
interest  in  them  and  in  the  company's  Maryland  possessions 
could  not  be  confiscated. 

Thomas  Russell,  at  his  death  in  1786,  left  a  son  Thomas, 
the  third  of  the  name.  On  his  arrival  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
one,  his  mother  having  previously  married  Daniel  Sheredine, 
he  revived  the  iron  industry  at  North  East  with  the  aid  of 
Sheredine,  and  in  1802  built  a  furnace,  which  was  in  opera- 
tion only  four  years.  Not  proving  as  profitable  as  had  been 
anticipated  it  was  blown  out  on  the  death  of  young  Thomas 
Russell,  which  occurred  in  1806.  Thenceforward  the  various 
iron  works  at  North  East  met  with  many  vicissitudes  until 
they  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  present  enterprising  owners. 

Iron  works  have  been  almost  continuously  in  operation  at 
Principio  and  North  East  since  their  first  establishment,  or 
for  about  one  hundred  and  seventy  years.  At  Principio  Mr. 
George  P.  Whitaker  and  his  associates  have  had  a  charcoal 
furnace  in  operation  since  1837  near  the  site  of  the  first 
Principio  furnace ;  and  at  North  East,  on  the  very  site  of  the 
forge  built  by  the  Principio  Company  about  1735,  are  the 
present  extensive  iron  works  of  the  McCullough  Iron  Com- 
pany, including  probably  the  largest  forge  in  the  United 
States  for  the  production  of  blooms  from  pig  iron. 

Pig  iron  from  early  Virginia  furnaces  near  tidewater  was 
taken  to  Principio  forge,  and  also  to  the  forge  at  North  East, 
to  be  refined  into  bar  iron. 

About  forty  years  ago  a  whole  pig  of  iron  was  found  near 
the  site  of  the  first  Principio  furnace,  which  was  plainly 
stamped  "Principio,  1727."  Over  twenty  years  ago  several 
pigs  of  iron,  marked  "  Principio  *  1751, "  were  discovered 
in  the  bed  of  the  Patapsco  river.  The  relics  of  1751  have 
been  preserved  by  the  Stickney  Iron  Company. 

A  furnace  at  the  foot  of  Gwynn's  falls,  and  a  forge  call- 
ed Mount  Royal,  at  Jones's  falls,  were  built  by  the  Baltimore 
Company  soon  after  1723  and  befor'e  1730 — Messrs.  Carroll, 
Tasker,  and  others  forming  the  company.  This  was  the  sec- 
ond blast  furnace  in  Maryland. 

Stephen  Onion  severed  his  connection  with  the  Principio 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  253 

Company  and  built  a  furnace  and  two  forges  of  his  own  at 
the  head  of  Gunpowder  river,  about  a  mile  from  Joppa,  then 
one  of  the  principal  towns  of  Maryland,  but  now  Wholly  de- 
serted. These  works  were  advertised  for  sale  in  1769,  after 
Stephen  Onion's  death.  The  exact  date  of  their  erection  has 
not  been  preserved. 

Bush  furnace,  in  Hartford  county,  and  Northampton  fur- 
nace, in  Baltimore  county,  were  built  about  1760,  the  latter 
by  members  of  the  Ridgely  family.  The  proprietors  of  this 
furnace  owned  a  forge  on  the  Great  Gunpowder  river,  called 
Long  Cam  forge,  which  was  probably  older  than  the  furnace. 
Bush  furnace,  located  on  Bush  creek,  was  owned  about  1767 
by  John  Lee  Webster.  On  the  Patapsco,  near  Elkridge  Land- 
ing, were  Elkridge  furnace  and  forge,  pwned  by  Edward  Dor- 
sey ;  at  a  locality  not  now  known  was  York  furnace  ;  in  Anne 
Arundel  county  were  the  Patuxent  furnace  and  forge,  owned 
by  Thomas,  Richard,  and  Edward  Snowden.  Richard  Snow- 
den  was  the  proprietor  of  "  iron  works  "  on  the  eastern  branch 
of  the  Patuxent  as  early  as  1734.  John  England,  who  died 
in  that  year,  had  an  interest  in  these  works.  There  was  an 
early  furnace  on  Stemmer's  run,  about  seven  miles  from 
Baltimore.  There  was  also  a  furnace  on  Curtis  creek,  in  Pa- 
tapsco county,  built  by  William  Goodwin  and  Edward  Dor- 
sey,  which  remained  in  operation  until  1851.  Nottingham 
furnace,  in  Baltimore,  was  built  before  the  Revolution. 
.  In  1762  Robert«E vans,  Jonathan  Morris,  and  Benjamin 
Jacobs  built  Unicorn  forge  at  a  place  called  Nasby,  in  Queen 
Anne  county.  The  castings  for  the  forge  were  procured  at 
"Bush  river  furnace,"  which  appears  to  have  been  then  op- 
erated by  Isaac  Webster.  The  firm  of  Evans,  Morris  &  Ja- 
cobs was  not  long  in  existence. 

In  Frederick  county  were  several  early  iron  enterprises, 
particulars  of  which  have  been  preserved  by  Alexander.  Old 
Hampton  furnace,  on  Tom's  creek,  about  two  miles  west  of 
Emmetsburg,  was  built  between  1760  and  1765  by  persons 
whose  names  have  not  survived.  Legh  furnace  was  built 
about  the  same  time  by  an  Englishman  named  Legh  Master, 
at  the  head  of  Little  Pipe  creek,  two  or  three  miles  southwest 
of  Westminster.  Both  of  these  furnaces  were  soon  abandon- 
ed. Catoctin  furnace,  situated  about  twelve  miles  northwest 


254  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

of  Frederick,  was  built  in  1774  by  James  Johnson  &  Co.  It 
was  rebuilt  in  1787  by  the  same  company,  "about  three- 
fourths  of  a  mile  further  up  Little  Hunting  creek,  and  nearer 
the  ore  banks."  It  was  again  rebuilt  about  1831.  This  fur- 
nace and  two  later  furnaces  of  the  same  name  were  in  blast 
in  1880.  The  original  Catoctin  furnace  yielded  at  first  from 
twelve  to  eighteen  tons  of  pig  iron  weekly.  Shortly  after  its 
erection  the  same  owners  erected  on  Bush  creek,  about  two 
miles  above  its  mouth,  the  Bush  Creek  forge,  which  was  in 
operation  until  1810,  when  it  was  abandoned.  About  the  time 
when  Catoctin  furnace  and  Bush  Creek  forge  were  built. the 
Johnsons  built  a  rolling  and  slitting  mill  at  a  spot  known  in 
1840  as  Reel's  mill.  About  1787  they  built  Johnson  furnace 
on  a  small  stream  one,  mile  above  the  mouth  of  the  Monoc- 
acy.  In  1793  the  various  iron  properties  belonging  to  the 
Johnsons  were  divided,  and  Johnson  furnace  fell  to  Roger 
Johnson,  who  soon  afterwards  built  a  forge  in  connection  with 
the  furnace.  It  was  situated  on  Big  Bennett's  creek,  about 
five  miles  above  its  junction  with  the  Monocacy,  and  was  call- 
ed Bloomsburg  forge.  Its  weekly  product  was  between  four 
and  five  tons  of  finished  iron.  The  furnace  and  forge  were 
abandoned  soon  after  1800.  Fielderea  furnace,  on  the  Har- 
per's Ferry  road,  three  miles  south  of  Frederick,  was  built  by 
Fielder  Gantt  soon  after  the  Revolution,  but  after  making 
one  blast  it  was  abandoned.  This  event  occurred  before  1791. 
In  Washington  county  there  were  many  iron  enterprises 
at  an  early  day,  most  of  which  have  been  noted  by  Alexan- 
der. In  1770  James  Johnson  superintended  the  erection  of 
Green  Spring  furnace,  on  Green  Spring  run,  one  mile  above 
its  entrance  into  the  Potomac.  It  was  owned  by  Mr.  Jacques 
and  Governor  Johnson.  The  neighboring  iron  ore  not  being 
of  good  quality  the  furnace  was  abandoned  in  a  few  years. 
James  Johnson  also  built  Licking  Creek  forge,  at  the  mouth 
of  Licking  creek,  for  the  same  firm.  It  was  at  first  supplied 
with  pig  iron  from  Green  Spring  furnace,  but  was  afterwards 
sold  to  "  Mr.  Chambers,  of  Chambersburg,  who  carried  it  on 
for  several  years  with  pig  supplied  from  his  furnace  in  Penn- 
sylvania." Mount  Etna  furnace,  on  a  branch  of  Antietam 
creek,  five  or  six  miles  north  of  Hagerstown,  was  built  by 
Samuel  and  Daniel  Hughes  about  1770  and  was  in  successful 


*IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  255 

operation  for  many  years.  During  the  Revolution  -it  cast  the 
first  Maryland  cannon.  About  a  mile  and  a  half  from  the 
furnace,  and  about  four  miles  from  Hagerstown,  the  same 
owners  built  Antietam  forge,  which  was  in  operation  after  the 
furnace  was  abandoned.  Bishop  states  that  General  Thomas 
Johnson  and  his  brother  were  the  owners  in  May,  1777,  of  a 
furnace  at  Frederick,  but  it  was  not  then  in  blast.  Between 
1775  and  1780  Henderson  &  Ross  built  a  furnace  at  the  mouth 
of  Antietam  creek.  A  forge  was  built  at  the  same  place  about 
the  same  time.  There  were  at  least  three  forges  on  Antietam 
creek  during  the  last  century.  In  1845  a  new  furnace  was 
built  on  the  site  of  the  original  Antietam  furnace,  but  it  has 
recently  been  dismantled.  A  small  rolling  mill,  with  a  nail 
factory  attached,  was  built  at  the  same  place  about  1831  and 
abandoned  about  1853. 

Bishop  says  that  a  slitting  mill  was  established  at  or  near 
Baltimore  in  1778  by  William  Whetcroft,  and  that  about  the 
same  time  two  nail  factories  were  established  in  the  city,  one 
by  George  Matthews  and  the  other  by  Richardson  Stewart. 
At  Elkridge  Landing  Dr.  Howard  owned  a  tilting  forge  in 
1783.  On  Deer  creek,  in  Harford  county,  a  forge  and  slitting 
mill  were  built  during  the  last  century.  During  the  Revolu- 
tion there  were  seventeen  or  eighteen  forges  in  operation  in 
Maryland,  in  addition  to  furnaces  and  other  iron  enterprises. 

After  the  Revolution  the  iron  manufacture  of  Maryland 
experienced  a  healthy  enlargement,  which  continued  with- 
out serious  interruption  until  in  recent  years.  One  of  the 
most  successful  rolling  mills  in  the  State  was  the  celebrated 
Avalon  iron  works,  on  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad,  half 
a  mile  from  the  Relay  House,  "  built  by  the  Dorseys  "  about 
1795  and  in  use  down  to  about  1860.  It  first  made  nails  and 
bar  iron,  and  in  its  latter  days  large  quantities  of  both,  but 
afterwards,  as  early  as  1848,  it  also  rolled  rails.  A  rolling  mill 
was  built  on  the  Big  Elk  river,  five  miles  north  of  Elkton, 
in  1810,  on  the  site  of  copper  works  which  had  existed  before 
the  Revolution.  It  was  active  until  about  1860,  making  sheet 
iron  chiefly.  Octorara  forge,  and  Octorara  rolling  mill,  on 
Octorara  creek,  above  its  mouth  and  a  feAv  miles  north  of 
Port  Deposit,  were  built  many  years  ago.  The  rolling  mill  is 
still  active.  This  mill  and  another  Maryland  rolling  mill  of 


256  THE    MANUFACTURE    C>F 

modern  origin  are  owned  by  the  McCullough  Iron  Company. 
The  once  numerous  forges  of  Maryland  have  gradually  given 
place  to  rolling  mills.  In  1840  several  forges  were  in  opera- 
tion ;  in  1856  two  forges  were  active ;  and  in  1891  there  were 
again  two  forges  active,  at  North  East  and  Principio. 

The  development  of  the  iron  ores  belonging  to  the  coal 
measures  of  the  extreme  western  part  of  Maryland  appears 
to  have  been  undertaken  over  fifty  years  ago.  Near  the  vil- 
lage of  Friendsville,  on  Bear  creek,  a  branch  of  the  Yough- 
iogheny  river,  there  were  erected,  in  1828  and  1829,  the  Yo- 
hogany  iron  works,  consisting  of  a  furnace  and  two  forges,  to 
use  charcoal.  These  works  were  abandoned  about  1834.  In 
1837  a  furnace  fifty  feet  high  and  fourteen  and  one-half  feet 
wide  at  the  boshes  was  built  at  Lonaconing,  eight  miles 
southwest  of  Frostburg,  by  the  George's  Creek  Coal  and  Iron 
Company,  to  use  coke.  In  June,  1839,  it  was  making  about 
seventy  tons  of  good  foundry  iron  per  week  with  coke  as  fuel. 
Overman  claims  that  this  was  the  first  successful  coke  fur- 
nace in  the  United  States.  Two  large  blast  furnaces  were 
built  in  1840  by  the  Mount  Savage  Iron  Company,  nine  miles 
northwest  of  Cumberland,  also  to  use  coke.  This  enterprise 
was  also  successful.  In  1845  the  same  company  built  an  ad- 
ditional furnace,  but  it  was  never  lined.  The  Mount  Savage 
rolling  mill  was  built  in  1843,  especially  to  roll  iron  rails, 
and  in  1844  it  rolled  the  first  rails  rolled  in  this  country 
that  were  not  strap  rails.  These  rails  were  of  the  inverted 
U  pattern  and  weighed  forty-two  pounds  to  the  yard.  Alle- 
ghany  county,  Maryland,  is  thus  entitled  to  two  of  the  high- 
est honors  in  connection  with  the  American  iron  trade.  It 
built  the  first  successful  coke  furnace  and  it  rolled  the  first 
heavy  iron  rails.  The  furnaces  and  rolling  mill  of  the  Mount 
Savage  Iron  Company  have  long  been  abandoned. 

In  1846  a  furnace  called  Lena  was  built  at  Cumberland, 
which  at  first  used  charcoal  and  afterwards  used  coke.  It 
was  not  long  in  operation. 

Alexander  mentions  a  furnace  on  the  Eastern  Shore  of 
Maryland,  built  in  1830  by  Mark  Richards,  about  five  miles 
from  Snow  Hill,  to  use  bog  ore  yielding  only  28  per  cent,  of 
iron.  Its  annual  production  about  1834  was  700  tons.  In 
1840  the  furnace  was  owned  by  T.  A.  Spence.  It  was  called 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  257 

Naseongo,  and  it  was  the  only  furnace  in  the  State  which 
used  bog  ore  exclusively.  A  bloomary  which  used  bog  ore 
once  stood  near  Federalsburg,  but  it  was  abandoned  long  ago. 
The  prominence  of  Maryland  as  an  iron-producing  State 
was  relatively  much  greater  in  1870  than  in  1880.  In  the 
former  year  it  was  fifth  in  rank  but  in  the  latter  year  it  was 
only  twelfth  in  rank.  In  1890  it  was  the  eleventh  in  rank 
in  the  production  of  pig  iron,  but  its  rank  as  a  producer  of 
rolled  iron  was  still  lower.  Its  production  of  steel  in  1890 
was  very  small,  but  the  completion  in  1891  of  the  extensive 
Bessemer  steel  works  of  the  Pennsylvania  Steel  Company  at 
Sparrow's  Point  will  soon  place  the  State  in  the  front  rank 
of  all  the  steel-producing  States,  and  the  recent  completion 
of  four  large  furnaces  by  the  same  company  will  soon  ad- 
vance its  rank  in  the  production  of  pig  iron. 


A  FURNACE  was  built  at  Georgetown,  in  the  District  of 
Columbia,  in  1849.  It  went  out  of  blast  finally  about  1855. 
A  second  stack  was  built  at  the  same  place  but  was  never 
lined,  and  consequently  was  never  put  in  blast.  Both  of  these 
were  small  furnaces.  The  furnace  which  was  in  operation 
used  charcoal  and  was  blown  with  steam-power.  Both  en- 
terprises were  owned  by  William  A.  Bradley,  of  Washington. 
Before  1812  the  United  States  Government  built  an  anchor 
forge  at  the  navy  yard  at  Washington,  which  was  enlarged 
about  1830  and  was  afterwards  used  to  produce  anchors, 
shafts,  chains,  etc.  About  the  time  when  this  forge  was  es- 
tablished there  was  a  cannon  foundry  "  about  a  mile  beyond 
Georgetown,  on  the  Potomac  river."  "A  cannon  was  cast  at 
this  foundry  of  100  Ibs.  ball,  to  which  was  given  the  name 
of  Columbiad."  The  District  of  Columbia  had  no  other  iron 
enterprises  until  1878,  when  the  Government  established  a 
small  rolling  mill  at  the  navy  yard,  which  was,  however, 
abandoned  in  1887.  The  forge  is  still  in  operation,  and  con- 
nected with  it  the  Government  now  has  also  in  operation 
an  extensive  gun  factory,  which  has  been  recently  fitted  up 
with  powerful  machine  tools,  immense  traveling  cranes,  and 
other  mechanical  appliances  for  manufacturing  from  forg- 
ings  made  elsewhere  the  heaviest  as  well  as  the  lightest 
ordnance  for  the  new  American  navy. 


258  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

CHAPTER   XXIII. 
THE  IRON  INDUSTRY   ESTABLISHED   IN  VIRGINIA. 

AFTER  the  failure  to  make  iron  on  Falling  creek  in  1622 
no  successful  effort  was  made  to  revive  the  iron  industry  in 
Virginia  until  after  the  beginning  of  the  succeeding  century, 
.a  delay  of  almost  a  hundred  years.  As  late  as  1670  Sir  Will- 
iam Berkley  reported  to  the  Lords  Commissioners  of  Foreign 
Plantations  that  but  little  iron  ore  had  been  discovered  in 
Virginia  up  to  that  time,  and  he  does  not  mention  any  iron 
works  as  then  existing  in  the  colony.  Additional  evidence 
that  there  was.  no  iron  made  in  Virginia  in  the  seventeenth 
century  is  given  in  a  preceding  chapter.  To  Colonel  Alex- 
ander Spotswood,  who  was  Governor  of  Virginia  from  1710 
to  1723,  the  honor  of  having  established  the  iron  industry  of 
the  colony  on  a  firm  and  permanent  basis  is  fairly  due,  al- 
though the  exact  date  of  the  commencement  of  his  various 
iron  enterprises  is  lost.  We  are  indebted  to  the  researches 
of  Mr.  R.  A.  Brock,  of  Richmond,  for  the  following  infor- 
mation concerning  the  inception  of  Governor  Spotswood's 
schemes  to  effect  a  revival  of  the  iron  industry  in  Virginia. 

In  the  collections  of  the  Virginia  Historical  Society  are 
two  MS.  volumes  of  the  letters  of  Governor  Spotswood  to  the 
Lords  Commissioners  the  Council  of  Trade  at  London,  cover- 
ing the  period  from  1710  to  1721.  On  October  24,  1710,  the 
Go vernor '  writes :  "There  is  a  project  to  be  handed  to  the 
next  assembly  for  improvement  of  the  iron  mines,  lately  dis- 
covered in  this  country,  the  ores  of  which  upon  tryall  have 
been  found  to  be  extraordinary  rich  and  good.  It  is  proposed 
that  the  work  be  carried  on  at  publick  charge."  This  scheme 
appears  not  to  have  been  acted  upon  by  the  assembly.  On 
December  15,  1710,  the  Governor  writes :  "  I  humbly  propose 
to  your  lordships'  consideration  whether  it  might  not  turn  to 
good  account  if  Her  Majesty  would  be  pleased  to  take  that 
work  [the  iron]  in  her  own  hands,  sending  over  workmen 
and  materials  for  carrying  it  on."  He  states  that  the  "  iron 
mines  lie  at  the  falls  of  James  river."  On  January  27, 1714, 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  259 

he  asks  that  the  German  Protestants  settled  at  the  head  of 
the  Rappahannock  river,  who  came  over  with  Baron  de  Graf- 
fenreidt  "  in  hopes  to  find  out  mines/'  be  exempted  from  the 
payment  of  levies  for  the  support  of  the  government. 

In  the  latter  part  of  1716  elaborate  charges  of  malfea- 
sance in  office  were  anonymously  preferred  against  Governor 
Spotswood  to  the  Council  of  Trade,  the  counts  of  which  are 
numerous.  In  one  of  them  Governor  Spotswood  is  charged, 
under  pretense  of  guarding  the  frontiers,  with  building,  at 
the  cost  of  the  government,  two  forts,  one  at  the  head  of 
James  river  and  another  at  the  head  of  Rappahannock  river, 
only  to  support  his  two  private  interests,  at  least  one  of 
which,  that  on  the  Rappahannock,  related  to  the  manufacture 
of  iron.  Another  account  charges  the  maintenance  at  public 
cost  at  these  forts  of  a  corps  of  "  rangers  "  for  three  years 
ending  in  December,  1716.  The  beginning  of  this  period 
would  be  near  that  of  the  German  settlement,  the  members 
of  which  became  the  workmen  of  Governor  Spotswood.  It 
may  be  assumed  that  one  of  his  iron  enterprises,  the  furnace 
built  by  the  Germans,  was  in  operation  certainly  in  1716  and 
most  likely  one  year  earlier. 

But  did  Governor  Spotswood  or  the  Germans  acting  in- 
dependently of  him  set  on  foot  the  first  of  these  enterprises  ? 
This  is  not  clear.  In  John  Esten  Cooke's  History  of  the  People 
of  Virginia  it  is  stated  that  these  Germans,  who  were  Palati- 
nates, had  been  "sent  over  by  Her  Majesty  Queen  Anne  to 
make  wine  and  help  in  the  iron  business,"  and  it  will  be  re- 
membered that  the  Governor  in  1710  proposed  that  the  Queen 
should  send  over  workmen  and  materials  for  the  express  pur- 
pose of  inaugurating  the  iron  industry  in  the  colony. 

In  1727  the  general  assembly  of  Virginia  passed  "  an  act 
for  encouraging  adventurers  in  iron-  works,"  which  begins 
as  follows :  "  Whereas,  divers  persons  have  of  late  expended 
great  sums  of  money  in  erecting  furnaces  and  other  works 
for  the  making  of  iron  in  several  parts  of  the  country,  .  . 
and  forasmuch  as  it  is  absolutely  necessary  for  roads  to  be 
laid  out  and  cleaned  from  all  such  iron  works  to  convenient 
landings,"  therefore,  etc.,  etc. 

In  A  Progress  to  the  Mines,  in  1732,  by  Colonel  William 
Byrd,  of  Westover,  Virginia,  the  second  of  the  name,  there  is 


260  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

given  a  very  full  account  of  the  iron  enterprises  of  Virginia 
at  that  time,  embracing  three  blast  furnaces  and  one  air  fur- 
nace, but  no  forge.  One  of  the  blast  furnaces  was  at  Fred- 
ericksville,  a  village  which  has  entirely  disappeared  from  the 
maps,  but  which,  as  will  hereafter  appear,  was  located  about 
thirty  miles  southwest  of  Frederick sburg,  in  Spottsylvania 
county,  and  about  one-half  mile  north  of  the  North  Anna 
river.  Mr.  Chiswell,  the  furnace  manager,  told  Colonel  Byrd 
that  the  pig  iron  produced  at  the  furnace  was  carted  in  ox 
carts  over  an  uneven  road  to  the  Rappahannock  river,  a  mile 
below  Fredericksburg.  This  furnace  was  built  of  brick,  but 
it  had  been  idle  "  ever  since  May,  for  want  of  corn  to  sup- 
port the  cattle."  Colonel  Byrd  says  :  "  The  fire  in  the  furnace 
is  blown  by  two  mighty  pair  of  bellows,  that  cost  £100  each, 
and  these  bellows  are  moved  by  a  great  wheel  of  twenty-six 
foot  diameter."  The  owners  of  the  furnace  had  invested 
about  £12,000  in  land,  negroes,  cattle,  etc.,  and  had  made 
1,200  tons  of  iron.  "  When  the  furnace  blows  it  runs  about 
twenty  tons  a  week."  Colonel  Byrd  says  that  the  company 
was  formed  as  follows :  "  Mr.  Fitz  Williams  took  up  the  mine 
tract,  and  had  the  address  to  draw  in  the  Governor,  [Spots- 
wood,]  Captain  Pearse,  Dr.  Nicolas,  and  Mr.  Chiswell  to  be 
jointly  concerned  with  him,  by  which  contrivance  he  first 
got  a  good  price  for  the'  land,  and  then,  when  he  had  been 
very  little  out  of  pocket,  sold  his  share  to  Mr.  Nelson  for 
£500,  and  of  these  gentlemen  the  company  at  present  con- 
sists. And  Mr.  Chiswell  is  the  only  person  amongst  them 
that  knows  anything  of  the  matter."  One  of  the  mines  at- 
tached to  the  furnace  was  fifteen  or  twenty  feet  deep,  and 
the  ore  was  dislodged  by  blasting,  after  which  it  was  carried 
away  "  in  baskets  up  to  the  heap."  It  was  calcined  before 
being  used,  layers  of  charcoal  and  ore  alternating.  The  lime- 
stone used  at  the  furnace  was  brought  from  Bristol,  in  Eng- 
land, as  ballast,  and  carted  from  the  Rappahannock  to  the 
furnace  by  the  ox  teams  which  brought  down  the  iron.  Col- 
onel Byrd  recommended  the  substitution  of  oyster  shells  for 
limestone,  but  without  effect.  If  this  furnace  had  made  only 
1,200  tons  of  iron  as  late  as  1732,  when  Colonel  Byrd  visited 
it,  it  is  evident  that  it  had  not  been  built  many  years.  We 
place  the  date  of  its  erection  at  about  1727. 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  261 

The  next  furnace  visited  by  Colonel  Byrd  was  directly 
controlled  by  Colonel  Spotswood,  and  was  situated  in  Spott- 
sylvania  county,  about  ten  miles  northwest  of  Fredericksburg 
and  about  ten  miles  east  of  the  small  town  of*Germanna.  This 
last  place  was  situated  in  Orange  county,  on  the  south  side 
of  the  Rapidan,  and  about  ten  miles  above  its  junction  with 
the  Rappahamiock.  It  had  been  settled  by  Germans  and 
afterwards  abandoned  for  another  location  on  "  land  of  their 
own,  ten  miles  higher,  in  the  Fork  of  Rappahannock."  This 
furnace,  according  to  Colonel  Spotswood,  was  the  first  in  Vir- 
ginia. It  was  t  built  of  rough  stone,  "  having  been  the  first 
of  that  kind  erected  in  the  country."  The  iron  made  at  this 
furnace  was  carted  fifteen  miles  to  Massaponax,  on  the  Rap- 
pahannock, five  miles  below  Fredericksburg,  where  Colonel 
Spotswood  had  recently  erected  an  air  furnace,  which  he 
"  had  now  brought  to  perfection,  and  should  be  thereby  able 
to  furnish  the  whole  country  with  all  sorts  of  cast  iron,  as 
cheap  and  as  good  as  ever  came  from  England."  The  blast 
furnace  "  had  not  blown  for  several  moons,  the  Colonel  hav- 
ing taken  off  great  part  of  his  people  to  carry  on  his  air 
furnace  at  Massaponax."  The  ore  at  this  furnace  was  also 
blasted  with  gunpowder.  "  Here  the  wheel  that  carried  the 
bellows  was  no  more  than  twenty  feet  diameter."  "All  the 
land  hereabouts  seems  paved  with  iron  ore,  so  that  there 
seems  to  be  enough  to  feed  a  furnace  for  many  ages."  Col- 
onel Spotswood  resided  at  Germanna  at  the  time  of  Colonel 
Byrd's  visit. 

Colonel  Byrd  next  mentions  "England's  iron  mines,  call- 
ed so  from  the  chief  manager  of  them,  tho'  the  land  belongs 
to  Mr.  Washington."  These  mines,  he  states,  were  on  the 
north  side  of  the  Rappahannock  river,  twelve  miles  distant 
from  Fredericksburg.  Two  miles  distant  from  the  mines 
was  a  furnace.  "  Mr.  Washington  raises  the  ore  and  carts 
it  thither  for  twenty  shillings  the  ton  of  iron  that  it  yields. 
The  furnace  is  built  on  a  run,  which  discharges  its  waters 
into  Potomeck.  And  when  the  iron  is  cast  they  cart  it  about 
six  miles  to  a  landing  on  that  river.  Besides  Mr.  Washing- 
ton and  Mr.  England  there  are  several  other  persons  in  Eng- 
land concerned  in  these  works.  Matters  are  very  well  man- 
aged there,  and  no  expense  is  spared  to  make  them  profitable, 


262  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

which  is  not  the  case  in  the  works  I  have  already  mentioned." 
This  was  Accokeek  furnace,  already  referred  to  in  the  Mary- 
land chapter.  It  was  situated  in  Stafford  county.  The  "  Mr. 
Washington "  referred  to  was  Augustine  Washington,  the 
father  of  George  Washington. 

Colonel  Byrd  did  not  visit  Accokeek  furnace.  He  visited 
Colonel  Spotswood's  air  furnace  at  Massaponax,  which  he  de- 
scribes. It  was  a  very  ambitious  and  creditable  enterprise, 
and  it  appears  to  have  been  successfully  managed.  Colonel 
Spotswood  used  it  "  to  melt  his  sow  iron,  in  order  to  cast  it 
into  sundry  utensils,  such  as  backs  for  chimneys,  andirons, 
fenders,  plates  for  hearths,  pots,  mortars,  rollers  for  garden- 
ers, skillets,  boxes  for  cart  wheels,  and  many  other  things. 
And,  being  cast  from  the  sow  iron,  are  much  better  than 
those  which  come  from  England,  which  are  cast  immediately 
from  the  ore  for  the  most  part."  "  Here  are  two  of  these  air 
furnaces  in  one  room,  that  so  in  case  one  want  repair  the 
other  may  work,  they  being  exactly  of  the  same  structure." 
Colonel  Spotswood  informed  Colonel  Byrd  that  Robert  Cary, 
of  England,  was  a  silent  partner  of  his  in  all  his  iron  enter- 
prises. In  Cooke's  History  of  tJie  People  of  Virginia  it  is  stated 
that  in  1760  about  600  tons  of  iron  were  smelted  at  "  Spots- 
wood's  furnaces,"  most  of  which  was  sent  to  England. 

Colonel  Byrd  was  the  owner  of  a  princely  estate,  on  the 
north  bank  of  the  James  river,  called  Westover,  where  he 
died  and  was  buried.  He  was  born  on  March  28,  1674,  and 
died  on  August  26,  1744.  He  was  the  founder  of  both  Rich- 
mond and  Petersburg.  Colonel  Spotswood  died  in  1740. 
p  Mr.  W.  H.  Adams,  of  Mineral  City,  Virginia,  has  recently 
undertaken  an  investigation  of  the  exact  location  of  Colonel 
Spotswood's  various  iron  enterprises,  and  has  placed  in  our 
hands  the  results  of  his  labors.  He  locates  the  furnace  built 
by  the  Germans,  and  which  he  calls  Rappahannock  furnace, 
on  a  small  stream  flowing  into  the  Rappahannock  river, 
about  ten  miles  above  Fredericksburg,  and  he  locates  the 
Fredericksville  furnace  in  the  southwestern  part  of  Spottsyl- 
vania  county.  He  says  that  few  vestiges  of  the  town  of 
Germanna  now  exist.  Its  site  was  on  the  Rapidan  river,  in 
Orange  county,  about  twenty  miles  west  of  Fredericksburg. 
The  Massaponax  air  furnace  he  locates  on  the  Rappahannock, 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  263 

on  a  neck  of  land  at  the  outlet  of  the  Massaponax  river,  on 
lands  now  owned  by  Dr.  Morton,  and  about  five  miles  below 
Fredericksburg.  From  his  description  of  the  location  and 
remains  of  the  Rappahannock  and  Fredericksville  furnaces 
we  condense  the  following  interesting  statement. 

The  Rappahannock  furnace  stood  close  to  the  fords  of  the  Rappahan- 
nock river,  and  on  the  almost  precipitous  banks  of  a  small  stream  which 
was  relied  on  for  the  necessary  power.  Considerable  grading  was  done  to 
provide  for  the  operation  of  the  furnace,  the  storage  of  charcoal,  limestone, 
ores,  etc.  Protected  by  its  isolated  position  the  structures  remained  in  an 
excellent  state  of  preservation.  The  furnace  is  almost  intact,  its  cleanly 
cut  stone  work  and  auxiliary  walls,  race,  and  chambers  being  about  as 
they  were  left  by  the  last  workmen  one  hundred  and  sixty  years  ago. 
A  giant  black-walnut  tree  is  growing  from  the  mouth  of  the  furnace,  bind- 
ing with  its  roots  the  heavy  walls  in  place,  and  closing  every  aperture 
against  the  ravages  of  time.  The  slag  piles,  fluxes,  coal,  and  considerable 
amounts  of  pig  iron,  found  in  odd  shapes  in  the  cinder  beds  and  the  bed 
of  the  brook ;  the  dam,  of  generous  extent  but  faulty  construction ;  the 
race-way,  tail-race,  etc.,  are  interesting  evidences  of  this  early  enterprise. 

The  location  of  the  Fredericksville  furnace  is  an  isolated  one,  in  the 
southwestern  part  of  Spotteylvania  county,  off  the  main  line  of  travel, 
about  30  miles  southwest  from  Fredericksburg,  10  miles  from  the  new 
town  of  Mineral  City,  and  one-half  mile  from  the  North  Anna  river. 
The  exact  site  of  the  furnace  is  just  off  the  main  county  road  from  Fred- 
ericksburg to  Mineral  City.  The  furnace  was  placed  on  a  small  stream, 
which  flowed  into  the  North  Anna  river.  The  dam,  which  was  estab- 
lished about  1,000  feet  above  the  furnace ;  the  race  which  brought  the  water 
down  to  the  furnace;  the  walls  of  the  flume  which  carried  the  water  to 
the  overshot  wheel ;  and  the  space  for  the  blowing  apparatus  are  all  to 
be  seen.  The  ores,  fluxes,  charcoal,  masonry,  etc.,  are  plentiful  in  the 
great  quantity  of  debris  scattered  about.  It  is  a  matter  of  regret,  however, 
that  the  furnace  itself  has  been  thought  of  so  little  account  by  the  owners 
of  the  land  during  the  past  twenty  years  that  no  care  has  been  taken  of 
the  materials  used  in  its  construction,  and  at  least  half  its  original  height 
has  been  sacrificed  to  furnish  foundations  and  chimneys  for  the  cabins  of 
the  neighborhood.  A  few  of  the  bricks,  unique  in  their  shape  and  weight, 
and  evidently  brought  from  some  foreign  land,  are  still  in  the  ruins  of  the 
furnace.  About  10  feet  of  the  stack  are  yet  standing. 

The  connection  of  the  Washington  family  with  the  iron 
industry  of  Virginia  and  Maryland  justifies  further  reference 
to  the  Accokeek  furnace.  Custis,  in  his  Recollections,  relates 
that  Augustine  Washington,  after  the  burning  of  his  house  in 
Westmoreland,  removed  to  a  situation  near  Fredericksburg, 
on  the  Rappahannock,  where  he  became  connected  with  the 
Phncipio  Company.  Colonel  Byrd  has  partly  explained  the 


264  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

nature  of  this  connection,  and  in  the  Maryland  chapter  it  is 
still  further  explained.  In  1750  Accokeek  furnace  sent  to 
England  410  tons  of  pig  iron,  which  was  about  one-sixth  of 
the  quantity  exported  from  Maryland  and  Virginia  in  that 
year.  Augustine  Washington,  at  his  death  in  1743,  left  the 
estate  afterwards  known  as  Mount  Vernon  and  his  interest  in 
all  the  possessions  of  the  Principio  Company  to  his  son  Lawrence, 
an  elder  half-brother  of  George  Washington.  Lawrence  died 
in  1752.  Mr.  Whiteley  says  that  Augustine  Washington's  in- 
terest in  the  Principio  Company  at  his  death  was  one-twelfth. 
He  had  probably  exchanged  for  this  interest  his  shares  in  the 
Accokeek  property,  which  will  hereafter  be  explained. 

We  have  examined  the  will  of  Lawrence  Washington,  of 
Fairfax  county,  Virginia,  as  it  is  recorded  in  Albert  Welles's 
History  of  the  Washington  Family.  It  is  dated  June  20,  1752. 
We  make  the  following  literal  extract :  "  I  give  and  bequeath 
to  my  daughter  Sarah,  .  .  after  my  just  debts  are  dis- 
charged, all  my  real  and  personal  estate  in  Virginia  and  the 
Province  of  Maryland,  not  otherwise  disposed  of.  But  in 
case  it  should  please  God  my  said  daughter  should  die  with- 
out issue,  it  is  then  my  will  and  desire  that  my  estate,  both 
real  and  personal,  be  disposed  of  in  the  following  manner. 
First.  I  give  and  bequeath  unto  my  loving  brother  Augus- 
tine Washington  and  his  heirs  forever  all  my  stock,  interest, 
and  estate  in  the  Principio,  Accokeek,  Kingsbury,  Laconshire, 
&  No.  East  iron  works,  in  Virginia  and  Maryland,  reserving 
one-third  of  the  profits  of  the  said  works  to  be  paid  my  wife 
as  hereafter  mentioned."  George  Washington  was  one  of  the 
executors  of  the  will.  Sarah  did  not  long  survive  her  father, 
and  upon  her  death  Augustine  Washington  succeeded  to  the 
ownership  of  his  iron  interests  and  George  Washington  suc- 
ceeded to  the  ownership  of  Mount  Vernon.  Mr.  Whiteley 
says  that  Accokeek  furnace  was  abandoned  soon  after  Law- 
rence Washington's  death,  owing  to  the  failure  of  a  supply 
of  ore  within  a  reasonable  distance.  In  1753  the  slaves,  hor- 
ses, cattle,  and  wagons  were  sold,  and  affairs  were  gradually 
closed  up  until  nothing  but  the  real  estate  was  left,  of  which 
Augustine  Washington  probably  afterwards  became  sole  own- 
er. But  he  continued  to  retain  an  interest  in  the  Principio 
Company's  other  iron  enterprises  until  the  Revolution,  dur- 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  265 

ing  which  they  passed  into  new  hands.  Mr.  Whiteley  also 
says  that  it  was  at  the  solicitation  of  Augustine  Washing- 
ton, "  in  behalf  of  himself  and  other  adventurers  in  iron 
works/'  that  in  1757  the  Virginia  Council  remitted  the  port 
duties  and  fees  on  pig  and  bar  iron  imported  into  that  prov- 
ince from  Maryland. 

Before  parting  with  the  Washington  family  we  will  here 
refer  to  a  well-preserved  deed  which  is  now  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  Maryland  Historical  Society.  This  deed,  which 
was  executed  on  March  2,  1729,  recites  that  on  July  24, 1726, 
Augustine  Washington  "  did  demise,  grant,  bargain,  and  sell 
unto  "  John  England  as  trustee  "  the  said  Augustine  Wash- 
ington's plantation  and  lands  situate,  lying,  and  being  at 
Accokeek  run  in  Stafford  county  in  Virginia,  .  .  contain- 
ing by  estimation  one  thousand  six  hundred  acres,  or  there- 
abouts, together  with  all  the  soil  thereof,  with  all  manner  of 
iron  mines  and  iron  oar  .  .  within  the  limits  of  the  said 
plantation,  together  also  with  all  and  singular  the  woods, 
trees,  rivers,"  etc.  "And  the  said  Augustine  Washington  did 
by  the  said  verited  lease  grant  unto  the  said  John  England 
the  full  right  and  authority  to  cutt  and  make  any  shafts, 
pitts,  or  devoids  upon  the  said  lands,  to  open  or  draw  any  of 
the  mines,  oars,  and  mineralls  aforesaid,"  and  "to  refine, 
mill,  and  manufacture  the  oars  and  mineralls  aforesaid,  and 
to  set  up  any  furnaces,  buildings,  or  engines  upon  the  said 
land  or  any  part  thereof." 

In  consideration  of  these  grants  to  John  England,  which 
were  confirmed  to  the  Principio  Company  by  the  deed  from 
which  we  have  above  quoted,  and  which  it  was  to  hold  for  a 
thousand  years,  Augustine  Washington  was  to  receive  "  the 
yearly  rent  of  one  ear  of  corn  if  demanded "  and  a  two- 
twelfths  interest  in  the  lands  conveyed  and  in  the  furnace 
and  other  improvements  which  should  be  made  upon  them, 
the  whole  ownership  to  be  divided  as  follows  :  Walter  Chet- 
wynd,  two-twelfths ;  William  Chetwynd,  two-twelfths  ;  Joshua 
Gee,  one-twelfth  ;  William  Russell,  one-twelfth  ;  Thomas  Rus- 
sell, one-twelfth  ;  John  Wightwick,  two-twelfths  ;  Augustine 
Washington,  two-twelfths;  and  John  England,  one-twelfth. 
The  instrument  from  which  we  have  quoted  recites  that 
"  since  the  making  of  the  said  lease,"  on  July  24,  1726,  "  the 


266  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

said  John  England  hath  on  the  said  premises  erected  an  iron 
furnace,  dam,  and  other  works  and  buildings  for  the  rosting 
of  iron."  The  instrument  further  recites  that  the  lease  of 
July  24,  1726,  is  recorded  in  folios  524  to  529  of  Book  No.  1 
of  the  court  of  Stafford  county,  session  of  June  10,  1728. 
And  it  further  says  that  "the  said  John  England,  for  and  on 
account  of  the  said  works,  .  .  hath  purchased  and  taken 
in  fee,  or  for  years,  or  some  other  estate,  several  other  par- 
cells  of  land  in  Virginia  aforesaid,  amounting  in  the  whole 
to  one  thousand  five  hundred  acres  or  thereabouts." 

Mr.  Brock  writes  us  that,  in  Hening's  Statutes,  volume  IX., 
there  is  "an  act  for  the  encouragement  of  iron  works," 
passed  in  May,  1777,  which  recites  that,  "  Whereas,  the  dis- 
covery and  manufacturing  of  iron  ore  requisite  for  the  fabri- 
cating the  various  implements  of  husbandry,  small  arms,  in- 
trenching tools,  anchors,  and  other  things  necessary  for  the 
army  and  navy,  is  at  this  time  essential  to  the  welfare  and 
existence  of  this  State,  as  the  usual  supplies  of  pig  and  bar 
iron  from  foreign  States  is  rendered  difficult  and  uncertain, 
and  James  Hunter,  near  Fredericksburg,  hath  erected  and  is 
now  carrying  on,  at  considerable  expense  and  labour,  many 
extensive  factories,  slitting,  plating,  and  wire  mills,  and  is 
greatly  retarded  through  the  want  of  pig  and  bar  iron;  and 
whereas,  there  is  a  certain  tract  of  land  in  the  county  of  Staf- 
ford, called  or  known  by  the  name  of  Accokeek  furnace  tract, 
on  which  a  furnace  for  the  making  of  pig  iron  was  formerly 
erected  and  carried  on,  which  has  been  since  discontinued," 
etc.,  etc.,  James  Hunter  is  therefore  authorized  to  enter  upon 
two  hundred  acres  of  the  Accokeek  tract,  including  the  old 
furnace,  if  its  owners  or  agents  should  fail  in  one  month  to 
begin  and  within  six  months  to  erect  thereon  a  furnace  equal 
to  or  larger  than  the  former  one,  and  prosecute  the  same  for 
the  making  of  pig  iron  and  other  castings.  We  think  that 
this  proposed  new  furnace  was  never  built,  as  it  is  not  re- 
ferred to  in  Thomas  Jefferson's  Notes  on  the  State  of  Virginia, 
to  be  quoted  from  hereafter,  while  "  a  forge  of  Mr.  Hunter's, 
at  Fredericksburg,"  is  distinctly  noted  by  Jefferson. 

Mr.  Chiswell  told  Colonel  Byrd  that  "we  had  as  yet  no 
forge  erected  in  Virginia,  tho'  we  had  four  furnaces.  But 
there  was  a  very  good  one  set  up  at  the  head  of  the  bay  in 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  267 

Maryland,  that  made  exceeding  good  work."  The  forge  re- 
ferred to  was  doubtless  the  one  at  Principle,  the  North  East 
forge  not  having  been  built  until  about  1735.  Colonel  Spots- 
wood  told  Colonel  Byrd  that  "  he  was  not  only  the  first  in  this 
country,  but  the  first  in  North  America,  who  had  erected  a 
regular  furnace ;  that  they  ran  altogether  upon  bloomerys  in 
New  England  and  Pennsylvania  till  his  example  had  made 
them  attempt  greater  works."  This  statement  is  correct  only 
so  far  as  it  relates  to  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron  exclusively 
and  not  castings.  By  the  phrase,  "a  regular  furnace,"  Colonel 
Spots  wood  meant  a  furnace  which  was  built  expressly  to 
make  pig  iron.  Colonel  Byrd's  statement,  that  the  furnace 
near  Germanna  was  the  first  furnace  in  the  country  that  was 
"  built  of  rough  stone,"  is  not  correct. 

In  the  Valley  of  Virginia  many  furnaces  and  forges  were 
built  before  the  Revolution  and  others  were  built  before  the 
close  of  the  last  century.  Zane's  furnace  and  forge,  on  Cedar 
creek,  in  Frederick  county,  were  "  built  before  any  iron  works 
in  this  region."  Pine  forge,  in  Shenandoah  county,  three  and 
a  half  miles  north  of  New  Market,  was  built  at  an  early  day. 
Isabella  furnace,  on  Hawksbill  creek,  near  Luray,  in  Page 
county,  was  built  about  1760.  About  1775  a  furnace  was  built 
on  Mossy  creek,  Augusta  county,  by  Henry  Miller  and  Mark 
Bird,  of  Berks  county,  Pennsylvania.  Bird  soon  sold  his  in- 
terest to  Miller.  A  forge  was  soon  added  to  this  furnace. 

Union  forge,  near  Waynesborough,  in  Augusta  county, 
was  built  about  1800.  In  Rockbridge  county  were  two  for- 
ges, built  about  1800 — Gibraltar  forge,  on  North  river,  nine 
miles  north  of  Lexington,  and  Buffalo  forge,  on  Buffalo  creek, 
the  same  distance  south  of  Lexington.  Moore's  furnace,  on 
Steele's  creek,  in  this  'county,  and  a  furnace  on  Smith's  creek, 
in  Rockingham  county,  were  built  before  1800. 

A  furnace  was  built  in  Loud  on  county  before  1800,  con- 
cerning which  Bishop  states  that  Mr.  Clapham,  its  owner, 
"  cut  a  canal  through  the  end  of  Cotocktin  mountain,  500  feet 
through  solid  rock  and  60  feet  beneath  the  surface,  to  obtain 
water  for  his  furnace  and  mill." 

Iron  works  were  erected  in  Craig,  Grayson,  Wythe,  Wash- 
ington, Carroll,  and  other  southwestern  counties  before  the 
close  of  the  last  century.  A  forge  on  Chestnut  creek,  in  Car- 


268  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

roll  county,  was  built  about  1790,  and  another  on  Little  Reed 
Island  creek  was  built  about  the  same  time.  Poplar  Camp 
furnace,  on  Poplar  Camp  creek,  in  Wythe  county,  appears  to 
have  been  built  in  1778,  as  a  stone  bearing  that  date  and 
identified  with  the  furnace  is  still  preserved.  A  few  of  the 
old  charcoal  furnaces  that  are  still  in  existence  in  South  west-  • 
ern  Virginia  retain  all  their  primitive  characteristics.  They 
are  blown  by  water-power  with  wooden  "  tubs,"  are  placed 
against  a  bank  of  the  same  level  as  the  tunnel-head,  have  a 
cold  blast,  and  are  operated  by  "the  rule  of  thumb."  The 
stacks  are  built  of  stone.  But  even  in  Southwestern  Virginia 
modern  methods  are  now  obtaining  full  recognition. 

Bishop  says  that  an  excellent  "  air  furnace  "  was  built  at 
Westham,  six  miles  above  Richmond,  on  the  north  side  of  the 
James  river,  during  the  Revolution ;  there  was  also  a  cannon 
foundry  here  at  the  same  period.  The  "air  furnace"  is  said 
to  have  used  bituminous  coal,  from  the  mines  of  Chesterfield 
county,  in  the  manufacture  of  shot  and  shells  for  the  Conti- 
nental army.  Benedict  Arnold  destroyed  the  works  at  West- 
ham  in  1781.  A  rolling  and  slitting  mill  was  afterwards 
built  at  this  place. 

At  Lynchburg  and  its  vicinity,  in  the  James  River  valley, 
several  furnaces  and  forges  were  built  in  the  last  century, 
some  of  which  are  referred  to  in  the  following  extract  from 
Jefferson's  Notes  on  the  State  of  Virginia,  written  in  1781  and 
1782  but  not  printed  until  1788. 

The  mines  of  iron  worked  at  present  are  Callaway's,  Eoss's,  and  Bal- 
lendine's  on  the  south  side  of  James  river ;  Old's  on  the  north  side,  in  Al- 
bemarle ;  Millar's  in  Augusta ;  and  Zane's  in  Frederick.  These  two  last  are 
in  the  valley  between  the  Blue  ridge  and  North  mountain.  Callaway's, 
Ross's,  Millar's,  and  Zane's  make  about  150  tons  of  bar  iron  each  in  the 
year.  Ross's  makes  also  about  1,600  tons  of  pig  iron  annually;  Ballen- 
dine's,  1,000 ;  Callaway's,  Millar's,  and  Zane's,  about  600  each.  Besides 
these,  a  forge  of  Mr.  Hunter's,  at  Fredericksburg,  makes  about  300  tons  a 
year  of  bar  iron,  from  pigs  imported  from  Maryland;  and  Taylor's  forge, 
on  Neapsco  of  Patowmac,  works  in  the  same  way,  but  to  what  extent  I  am 
not  informed.  The  indications  of  iron  in  other  places  are  numerous,  and 
dispersed  through  all  the  middle  country.  The  toughness  of  the  cast  iron 
of  Ross's  and  Zane's  furnaces  is  very  remarkable.  Pots  and  other  uten- 
sils cast  thinner  than  usual,  of  this  iron,  may  be  safely  thrown  into  or  out 
of  the  wagons  in  which  they  are  transported.  Salt-pans  made  of  the  same, 
and  no  longer  wanted  for  that  purpose,  cannot  be  broken  up,  in  order  to  be 
melted  again,  unless  previously  drilled  in  many  parts. 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  269 

This  account  by  Jefferson  seems  to  establish  the  fact  that 
the  iron  industry  of  Virginia  was  not  very  extensive  about 
the  close  of  the  Revolution.  Ross's  works  were  on  Beaver 
creek,  seven  miles  southeast  of  Lynchburg,  and  Thomas  Cal- 
la way's  were  near  Rocky  Mount,  or  Franklin  court-house. 
Lesley  mentions  Saunders's  furnace  at  the  latter  place  as  hav- 
ing been  abandoned  about  1800.  Henry  Miller's  works  were 
near  the  northern  boundary  of  Augusta  county,  "  at  the  foot 
of  North  mountain."  In  1777  Old's  furnace  was  referred  to 
in  the  Virginia  legislature  as  an  "  old  furnace  "  that  was  "  yet 
standing,  tho'  somewhat  out  of  repair,"  but  it  was  proposed 
to  put  it  in  blast,  to  aid  by  its  product  in  accomplishing  the 
independence  of  the  colonies.  This  proposition  took  the  form 
of  a  resolution  appropriating  a  loan  of  X2,000  to  one  of  the 
proprietors.  The  furnace  was  then  said  to  have  been  owned 
by  Messrs.  Old,  Wilkinson  &  Trent,  and  Wilkinson  was  the 
partner  to  be  benefited  by  the  loan  from  the  Virginia  treas- 
ury. The  furnace  appears  to  have  been  promptly  put  in  blast, 
as  Jefferson  says  that  the  mines  belonging  to  this  furnace 
were  "  worked "  when  his  Notes  were  written.  The  furnace 
was  located  about  twelve  miles  from  Charlottesville. 

About  1790  the  iron  industry  of  Virginia  took  a  fresh 
start,  as  did  many  other  industries  of  the  State.  No  State  in 
the  Union  gave  more  attention  to  domestic  manufactures  af- 
ter the  close  of  the  Revolution  than  Virginia.  This  activity 
continued  for  many  years,  but  it  was  partly  checked  in  sub- 
sequent years  by  the  greater  attention  given  by  the  people 
of  Virginia  to  agricultural  pursuits.  Richmond,  Lynchburg, 
Staunton,  Winchester,  and  some  other  places  became  noted 
for  the  extent  and  variety  of  their  manufactures.  Household 
manufactures  were  everywhere  promoted.  The  manufacture 
of  nails  was  one  of  these  household  industries.  Thomas  Jef- 
ferson required  about  a  dozen  of  the  younger  slaves  owned 
by  him  to  make  nails,  and  it  is  said  that  "  they  made  about 
a  ton  of  nails  a  month  at  a  considerable  profit."  The  Gov- 
ernment armory  at  Harper's  Ferry  was  established  in  1798. 

Lesley  enumerates  no  less  than  eighty-eight  charcoal  fur- 
naces and  fifty-nine  forges  and  bloomaries  as  having  been 
built  in  Virginia  prior  to  1856;  also  twelve  rolling  mills. 
Several  of  these  enterprises  were  within  the  limits  of  the 


270  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

present  State  of  West  Virginia.  The  furnaces  were  located  in 
thirty-one  counties  and  the  forges  in  twenty-five  counties. 

The  first  rolling  mill  of  any  kind  west  of  the  Allegheny 
mountains  and  outside  of  Pennsylvania  of  which  we  can  ob- 
tain exact  information  was  located  in  West  Virginia,  and  is 
described  in  Cramer's  Pittsburgh  Almanack  for  1813,  issued  in 
1812,  as  follows  :  "  Jackson  &  Updegraff,  on  Cheat  river,  have 
in  operation  a  furnace,  forge,  rolling  and  slitting  mill,  and 
nail  factory — nails  handsome,  iron  tough."  Like  all  the 
rolling  and  slitting  mills  of  that  day  the  Cheat  river  mill 
did  not  puddle  iron  nor  roll  bar  iron,  but  rolled  only  sheet 
iron  for  salt  pans,  domestic  utensils,  and  nail  plates  from 
blooms  made  in  forges.  Hon.  James  Veech  informed  us  in 
his  lifetime  that  the  location  of  the  Cheat  river  mill  was  on 
the  road  from  Uniontown  to  Morgantown,  about  three  miles 
south  of  the  Pennsylvania  State  line  and  eight  miles  north  of 
Morgantown.  It  was  in  Monongalia  county. 

In  the  old  days  before  the  civil  war  Wheeling  was  the 
centre  of  the  rolling-mill  industry  of  Virginia,  having  seven 
of  the  twelve  rolling  mills  in  the  State.  Of  the  remaining 
five  mills  four  were  in  Richmond  and  one  was  on  Reed  creek, 
in  Wythe  county,  twelve  miles  east  of  Wytheville.  Since  the 
war  a  few  new  rolling  mills  have  been  built  in  the  old  State 
of  Virginia  and  new  mills  and  steel  works  have  been  built  at 
Wheeling.  The  first  rolling  mill  at  Wheeling  was  built  in 
1832  by  Dr.  Peter  Shoenberger  and  David  Agnew,  both  Penn- 
sylvania ironmasters.  This  mill  was  called  the  Wheeling 
iron  works,  and  the  firm  was  styled  Shoenberger  &  Agnew. 
The  most  prominent  nail-manufacturing  district  in  the  Uni- 
ted States  at  the  present  time  is  the  Wheeling  district,  which 
includes  the  nail  factories  in  West  Virginia  and  in  that  part 
of  Ohio  which  lies  near  Wheeling. 

The  works  of  the  Tredegar  Iron  Company  at  Richmond, 
Virginia,  are  among  the  most  notable  of  their  kind  in  the 
United  States.  They  were  founded  in  1836  by  the  late 
Francis  B.  Deane,  and  embrace  a  large  rolling  mill,  an  exten- 
sive foundry  and  machine  shop,  and  a  large  car  factory. 
During  the  civil  war  these  works  were  a  tower  of  strength 
to  the  Southern  Confederacy,  manufacturing  cannon,  -cannon 
balls,  and  other  munitions  of  war  in  large  quantities  down 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  271 

to  the  evacuation  of  Richmond  in  April,  1865.  Prior  to  the 
war,  however,  they  had  achieved  a  national  reputation.  The 
United  States  steam  frigates  Roanoke  and  Colorado  and  the 
United  States  revenue  cutter  James  K.  Polk  were  furnished  ' 
with  engines,  boilers,  and  guns  from  these  works.  Nearly  all 
the  machinery  of  the  Tredegar  works  is  driven  by  water- 
power  from  the  James  river. 

A  large  number  of  the  furnaces  and  forges  of  Virginia 
were  abandoned  before  1850.  In  1856  there  were  thirty-nine 
charcoal  furnaces  and  forty-three  forges  enumerated  by  Les- 
ley as  being  then  in  operation  or  prepared  to  make  iron. 
Since  1856  many  of  the  charcoal  furnaces  and  nearly  all 
the  forges  that  were  then  in  existence  have  been  abandoned. 
Insufficient  transportation  facilities,  coupled  with  the  failure 
of  ore  in  certain  localities,  have  had  much  to  do  with  the 
abandonment  of  many  charcoal  furnaces  in  Virginia,  while 
the  disappearance  of  the  forges  is  due  to  the  competition  of 
rolling  mills.  Of  late  years,  however,  the  extension  of  rail- 
roads and  the  discovery  of  new  and  valuable  ore  deposits 
have  given -a  fresh  impetus  to  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron 
in  Virginia  and  West  Virginia,  much  of  which  is  made  with 
coke  obtained  in  the  now  celebrated  Pocahontas  Flat  Top 
coal  region,  which  is  found  in  both  Virginia  and  West  Vir- 
ginia. The  future  of  the  iron  industry  of  these  two  States 
is  to-day  very  promising.  The  young  State  took  higher  rank 
in  both  1870  and  1880  among  iron-producing  States  than 
the  old  State.  It  ranked  tenth  in  1870  and  seventh  in  1880 ; 
whereas  Virginia  ranked  thirteenth  in  1870  and  sixteenth  in 
1880.  Since  1880,  however,  the  old  State  has  made  remark- 
able progress  in  the  erection  of  large  blast  furnaces  to  use 
coke  as  fuel.  Some  of  the  best  furnaces  in  the  country  are 
now  to  be  found  in  Virginia.  Its  total  production  of  pig 
iron  in  1880  was  only  26,726  gross  tons,  but  in  1883  it  was 
136,524  tons,  and  in  1890  it  was  292,779  tons.  In  1890 
Virginia  ranked  sixth  among  the  States  in  the  production 
of  pig  iron.  In  the  same  year  West  Virginia  ranked  fourth 
in  the  production  of  steel  but  was  twelfth  in  the  production 
of  pig  iron. — The  early  iron  history  of  West  Virginia  is  so 
closely  interwoven  with  that  of  Virginia  that  we  could  not 
devote  to  it  a  separate  chapter. 


272  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

CHAPTER   XXIV, 
THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  NORTH  CAROLINA. 

SCRIVENOR  says  that  in  1728-29  there  were  imported  into 
England  from  "  Carolina"  one  ton  and  one  cwt.  of  pig  iron, 
and  that  in  1734  there  were  imported  two  qrs.  and  twelve  Ibs. 
of  bar  iron.  Shipments  of  pig  iron  and  bar  iron  from  "  Caro- 
lina" were  made  in  subsequent  years  prior  to  the  Revolution. 
We  regret  that  we  can  not  lo,cate  the  first  iron  enterprises  in 
this  State.  Some  future  antiquarian  may  be  able  to  do  this. 
They  were  probably  situated  near  the  coast,  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  bog-ore  deposits.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  hoes  made 
in  Virginia  and  "  Carolina "  were  sold  in  New  York  long  be- 
fore the  Revolution. 

Bishop  says  that  several  iron  works  were  in  operation  in 
North  Carolina  before  the  Revolution,  some  of  which  were 
put  out  of  blast  by  that  event.  They  were  situated  on  tribu- 
taries of  the  Cape  Fear,  Yadkin,  and  Dan  rivers.  When  the 
shadow  of  the  approaching  conflict  with  the  mother  country 
reached  North  Carolina  her  patriotic  citizens,  first  in  conven- 
tion at  New  Berne  and  afterwards  in  the  provincial  legisla- 
ture, encouraged  by  the  offer  of  liberal  premiums  the  manu- 
facture of  crude  and  finished  iron  and  steel,  as  well  as  other 
manufactured  products.  "  John  Wilcox  was  the  proprietor  of 
a  furnace  and  iron  works  on  Deep  run  in  the  beginning  of 
the  war.  There  were  also  iron  works  in  Guilford  county, 
probably  on  the  same  stream.  In  April,  1776,  the  provincial 
congress  sent  commissioners  to  treat  with  Mr.  Wilcox  for  the 
use  of  his  furnace  and  works  for  two  years,  or  to  purchase 
and  repair  those  in  Guilford,  for  casting  ordnance,  shot,  etc., 
and  empowered  them  to  draw  on  the  treasury  for  £5,000  for 
that  purpose."  Troublesome  forge,  in  Guilford  county,  was  in 
operation  during  the  Revolution.  Buffalo  Creek  furnace  and 
forge  were  also  built  before  the  Revolution  on  Buffalo  creek, 
in  Cleveland  county,  not  far  from  King's  mountain,  on  the 
southern  border  of  the  State. 

Prior  to  1800  there  wpre  in  operation  in  Lincoln  county 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  273 

two  bloomaries,  four  forges,  and  two  furnaces.  One  of  the 
furnaces,  Vesuvius,  on  Anderson's  creek,  built  in  1780,  was  in 
operation  down  to  1873.  Of  other  iron  enterprises  established 
in  North  Carolina  in  the  last  century  we  gather  from  Lesley 
and  Bishop,  and  from  Dr.  William  Sharswood,  a  local  histo- 
rian, of  Danbury,  North  Carolina,  the  following  information  : 
Union  bloomary  forge,  on  Snow  creek,  in  Stokes  county,  six 
miles  northeast  of  Danbury,  was  built  in  1780  by  Peter  Per- 
kins and  James  Martin.  Other  iron  works  were  built  on 
Snow  creek,  in  the  same  county,  and  conducted  with  spirit 
before  1800.  Dr.  Sharswood  mentions  a  furnace  and  forge  on 
this  creek  which  were  built  by  Peter  Perkins  and  James  Tay- 
lor about  1795  :  they  were  located  about  half  a  mile  from  the 
mouth  of  the  creek.  Davis's  mill  now  stands  on  the  site  of 
the  furnace.  He  also  says  that  Matthew  Moore  built  a  forge 
on  Big  creek,  where  George's  mill  now  stands,  before  1800. 
Riser's  bloomary  forge,  on  the  headwaters  of  Town  fork,  in 
the  same  county,  ten  miles  southwest  of  Danbury,  was  built 
in  1796  by  George  Hauser  and  Philip  Kiser.  Hill's  bloomary 
forge,  on  Tom's  creek,  in  Surry  county,  nineteen  miles  west 
of  Danbury,  was  built  in  1791.  In  the  same  county,  near  the 
Yadkin,  iron  works  were  erected  a  few  years  after  the  Revo- 
lution, probably  by  Moravians  from  Pennsylvania,  who  had 
settled  in  the  county  as  early  as  1753.  In  Wilkes  county  a 
forge  was  built  about  the  same  time.  A  furnace  and  forge 
were  erected  on  Troublesome  creek,  in  Rockingham  county, 
at  an  early  day.  In  Burke  county,  at  the  foot  of  the  Blue 
ridge,  two  bloomaries  and  two  forges  were  erected  before  the 
close  of  the  last  century.  -^ 

After  1800  the  iron  industry  of  North  Carolina  was  still 
further  developed.  This  development  was,  however,  mainly 
confined  to  the  manufacture  of  bar  iron  in  bloomaries,  the 
magnetic  and  hematite  ores  of  North  Carolina  being  well 
adapted  to  this  mode  of  treatment.  In  1810,  according  to 
Tench  Coxe,  there  were  six  bloomaries,  two  rolling  and  slit- 
ting mills,  and  twro  naileries  in  Lincoln  county  ;  one  bloom- 
ary in  Iredell  county ;  six  bloomaries  and  one  trip-hammer 
in  Burke  county ;  and  five  bloomaries  in  Surry  county — 
eighteen  bloomaries  in  all.  In  1856  Lesley  enumerated  about 
forty  bloomaries  and  a  few  forges,  most  of  which  were  then  v 


274  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

in  operation.  They  were  located  in  Stokes,  Surry,  Yadkin, 
Catawba,  Lincoln,  Gaston,  Cleveland,  Ashe,  Watauga,  Ruther- 
ford, and  Cherokee  counties.  The  trompe  was  in  general  use. 
He  also  described  six  furnaces  :  Vesuvius,  already  referred  to ; 
Madison,  on.  Leiper's  creek,  in  Lincoln  county,  built  in  1810 ; 
Rehoboth,  on  the  same  creek  and  in  the  same  county,  built 
in  1810  ;  Columbia,  seven  miles  west  of  High  Shoals,  in  Gas- 
ton  county,  then  in  ruins ;  Tom's  Creek,  near  Hill's  forge, 
1  on  Tom's  creek,  destroyed  by  a  flood  in  1850 ;  Buffalo  Creek, 
already  referred  to,  and  then  in  ruins.  Vesuvius,  Madison, 
and  Rehoboth  were  blown  with  wooden  "tubs."  There  was 
also  active  at  this  date  a  small  rolling  mill  on  Crowder's 
creek,  in  Gaston  county,  a  mile  and  a  quarter  north  of  King's 
mountain,  owned  by  Benjamin  F.  Briggs,  of  Yorkville,  South 
Carolina,  and  built  in  1853.  At  the  same  time  another  small 
rolling  mill  and  forge,  known  as  High  Shoals  iron  works,  and 
situated  in  Gaston  county,  were  in  ruins. 

There  have  been  other  early  iron  works  in  North  Carolina 
than  those  mentioned  by  Lesley  or  the  other  authorities  from 
whom  we  have  quoted.  A  furnace  called  Washington  is  said 
to  have  been  built  in  Gaston  county  in  1788.  Iron  was  made 
in  a  bloomary  near  the  line  of  Nash  and  Wilson  counties  in 
the  war  of  1812,  and  during  the  civil  war  iron  was  made  in 
a  blast  furnace  in  the  same  locality.  About  1840  there  was  a 
furnace  called  Shuford  in  Catawba  county,  and  at  the  same 
period  there  was  a  furnace  called  Beard's  on  the  Catawba 
river,  probably  in  Catawba  county.  Iron  was  also  made  about 
the  same  time  on  Gunpowder  creek,  in  Caldwell  county,  prob- 
ably in  a  bloomary. 

In  the  census  year  1840  there  were  eight  furnaces  in  North 
Carolina,  which  produced  in  that  year  968  gross  tons  of  cast 
iron,  including  both  pig  iron  and  castings,  and  forty-three 
bloomaries,  forges,  and  rolling  mills,  which  produced  963  tons 
of  bar  iron. 

In  Mitchell  county,  in  the  northwestern  part  of  the  State, 
and  within  a  few  miles  of  the  Tennessee  line,  there  exists  an 
extensive  deposit  of  iron  ore  known  as  the  Cranberry  mines, 
the  deposit  taking  its  name  from  Cranberry  creek,  which  flows 
at  the  foot  of  the  steep  mountain  spurs  in  which  the  ore  is 
found.  This  ore  is  a  pure  magnetite,  and  is  practically  free 


IRON   IN  ALL  AGES.  275 

from  sulphur  and  phosphorus.  This  valuable  deposit  has 
been  in  part  developed  by  Northern  capital.  The  Cranberry 
Iron  Company  has  shipped  some  ore  to  distant  furnaces,  and 
it  has  also  built  at  the  mines  a  small  charcoal  furnace  which 
was  put  in  blast  in  the  spring  of  1884.  Cranberry  ore  was 
long  worked  in  bloomaries  in  the  neighborhood. 

At  least  three  furnaces  were  built  in  North  Carolina  dur- 
ing the  civil  war,  one  in  Chatham  county,  another  in  Lincoln 
county,  and  another,  already  referred  to,  on  the  line  of  Nash 
and  Wilson  counties.  Two  furnaces  were  built  in  Chatham 
county  after  the  war,  but  of  these  five  furnaces,  and  Vesuvius, 
Madison,  and  Rehoboth,  all  of  which  were  lately  standing,  as 
may  have  been  one  or  two  other  furnaces,  not  one  made  a 
pound  of  iron  from  1877  until  1881.  In  that  year  Rehoboth 
furnace  was  in  operation,  and  in  1882  it  was  still  active,  but 
in  1883  it  was  silent  and  it  has  since  been  idle.  In  1890  it 
was  reported  as  having  been  abandoned.  The  furnace  built 
in  Lincoln  county  during  the  war  was  named  Stonewall. 

Nearly  all  of  the  iron  works  that  have  been  referred  to 
have  been  built  in  the  western  part  of  North  Carolina.  Of 
the  long  list  of  bloomaries  and  forges  which  this  State  could 
once  boast  only  two  bloomaries  in  Mitchell  and  Surry  counties 
have  recently  been  active,  and  we  are  informed  that  neither 
of  these  is  likely  to  be  operated  again.  Of  all  the  furnaces 
that  North  Carolina  once  possessed  only  Cranberry  furnace 
has  been  active  in  late  years,  and  it  is  a  comparatively  new 
furnace.  There  is  not  to-day  a  rolling  mill  or  steel  works 
in  the  State. 


276  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

CHAPTER  XXV. 
THE   MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON    IN   SOUTH   CAROLINA. 

IF  the  iron  industry  of  North  Carolina  has  rapidly  de- 
clined in  late  years  that  of  South  Carolina  has  suffered  even 
a  worse  fate ;  it  has  been  an  extinct  industry  for  many  years. 
Yet  this  State  made  some  iron  as  early  as  the  Revolutionary 
period,  and  subsequently  it  made  iron  in  considerable  quan- 
tities. In  the  northwestern  part  of  South  Carolina,  including 
the  counties  of  Union,  Spartanburg,  and  York,  are  valuable 
deposits  of  magnetic  ores,  and  here,  according  to  Dr.  Ramsay, 
the  historian  of  South  Carolina,  the  first  iron  works  in  the 
State  were  erected  by  Mr.  Bufnngton  in  1773,  but  they  were 
destroyed  by  the  Tories  during  the  Revolution. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution  South  Carolina  fol- 
lowed the  example  of  many  other  colonies  by  offering  lib- 
eral premiums  to  those  who  would  establish  iron  works,  but 
we  do  not  learn  that  the  manufacture  of  iron  was  thereby 
increased.  Mr.  Buffington's  experience  probably  deterred  oth- 
ers from  embarking  in  the  business. 

Several  furnaces  and  forges  were  erected  in  this  State  a 
few  years  after  the  peace,  the  principal  of  which  were  the  Era 
and  Etna  furnaces  and  forges  in  York  county.  The  Era  was 
built  in  1787  and  the  Etna  in  1788.  These  enterprises  were 
situated  on  a  creek  flowing  into  the  Catawba  river  and  about 
two  miles  west  of  it.  In  1795  the  nearest  landing  to  these 
works  was  at  Camden,  seventy  miles  below.  They  were  on 
the  road  leading  from  Charlotte,  in  North  Carolina,  to  York- 
ville.  Iron  ore  was  abundant  in  the  neighborhood,  and  was 
easily  smelted  after  having  been  roasted.  "It  was  obtained, 
massive,  in  such  quantity  above  the  surface  that  it  was 
thought  there  would  be  no  occasion  to  resort  to  shafts  or 
levels  for  half  a  century."  William  Hill  was  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal owners  of  the  works.  He  is  said  to  have  devised  "  a 
new  blowing  apparatus,"  by  the  aid  of  which  he  contrived  to 
blow  "  all  the  fires,  both  of  the  forges  and  furnaces,  so  as  to 
render  unnecessary  the  use  of  wheels,  cylinders,  or  any  other 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  277 

kind  of  bellows."  This  apparatus  was  doubtless  the  trompe, 
or  water-blast,  but  Mr.  Hill  did  not  invent  it,  nor  was  he  the 
first  in  this  country  to  use  it.  The  statement,  which  Bishop 
quotes  from  some  unknown  authority,  is,  however,  valuable, 
as  it  contains  one  of  the  few  references  to  the  use  of  the 
trompe  in  this  country  in  blowing  a  blast  furnace  that  have 
come  under  our  notice.  Bishop  says  that  other  iron  works 
soon  followed  those  of  Mr.  Hill,  and  that  "  they  were  erected 
in  different  places,  including  several  in  the  mountain  district 
of  Washington,  where  iron,  the  only  article  made  for  sale  to 
any  extent,  was  manufactured  at  the  beginning  of  this  cent- 
ury as  cheap  and  good  as  the  imported." 

Tench  Coxe  enumerates  two  bloomaries  in  Spartanburg 
county  in  1810,  four  in  Pendleton  county,  two  in  Greenville 
county,  and  one  in  York  county — nine  in  all.  He  also  men- 
tions one  small  nailery  and  one  small  steel  furnace  in  the 
S^ate.  He  makes  no  reference  to  blast  furnaces,  but  his  sta- 
tistics were  probably  not  complete. 

Scrivenor  mentions  the  following  enterprises  in  South 
Carolina  as  existing  apparently  about  1815,  but  the  source 
of  his  information  we  have  been  unable  to  discover.  "  On 
Allison's  creek,  in  York  district,  there  are  a  forge,  a  furnace, 
a  rolling  mill  for  making  sheet  iron,  and  a  nail  manufactory. 
On  Middle  Tiger  river  are  iron  works  on  a  small  scale ;  also 
on  the  Enoree  river  and  Rudy  river,  on  the  north  fork  of 
Saluda  river,  on  George's  creek,  and  on  Twenty-six  mile 
creek.  In  1802  an  air  furnace  was  erected  on  a  neck  of  land 
between  Cooper  and  Ashley  rivers,  where  gjood  castings  are 
made."  York  district  is  the  same  as  York  county,  the  sub- 
divisions of  South  Carolina  having  been  known  as  districts 
down  to  1868. 

In  the  census  year  1840  there  were  four  furnaces  in  South 
Carolina,  which  produced  in  that  year  1,250  gross  tons  of 
castings  and  pig  iron,  and  nine  bloomaries,  forges,  and  roll- 
ing mills,  which  produced  1,165  tons  of  bar  iron. 

In  1856  South  Carolina  had  eight  furnaces — one  in  York, 
one  in  Union,  and  six  in  Spartanburg  county.  They  are  de- 
scribed by  Lesley.  Four  of  these  furnaces  were  then  in  oper- 
ation, producing  in  the  year  named  1,506  tons  of  charcoal 
iron,  but  three  others  had  been  "  out  of  repair  for  twenty 


278  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

years,"  and  the  remaining  furnace  had  been  abandoned.  In 
1856  there  were  also  three  small  rolling  mills  in  the  State- 
one  on  Pacolet  river,  in  Spartanburg  county;  one  on  Broad 
river,  in  Union  county ;  and  one  on  the  same  river,  in  York 
county.  At  the  first  two  of  these  mills  dry  wood  was  used  in 
the  puddling  and  heating  furnaces.  In  1856  the  three  mills 
made  1,210  tons  of  bar  iron  and  nails.  In  the  same  year 
there  were  also  in  South  Carolina  two  "  bloomaries,"  one  con- 
nected with  the  rolling  mill  in  Union  county  and  the  other 
connected  with  the  rolling  mill  in  York  county.  Their  joint 
product  was  640  tons  of  blooms.  Strictly  speaking  these 
"  bloomaries  "  were  forges,  as  they  doubtless  used  pig  iron. 

But  South  Carolina  no  longer  makes  iron.  Every  iron- 
producing  establishment  in  the  State  is  to-day  silent  and 
has  been  silent  for  many  years,  and  all  are  in  a  more  or 
less  dilapidated  condition.  South  Carolina  and  Vermont 
furnish  the  only  instances  in  the  history  of  the  country  *f 
States  having  wholly  abandoned  the  manufacture  of  iron. 


IRON  IN  ALL  AGES.  279 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 
THE  EAKLY  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  GEORGIA. 

GEORGIA  is  the  last  of  the  original  thirteen  colonies  whose 
iron  history  remains  to  be  noticed.  Unlike  its  sister  colonies, 
however,  Georgia  has  no  colonial  iron  history.  It  was  the 
last  of  the  thirteen  to  be  settled,  and  it  was  not  until  within 
a  few  years  of  the  commencement  of  the  Revolutionary  strug- 
gle that  the  few  settlements  on  the  coast  began  to  experience 
even  moderate  prosperity.  After  the  close  of  the  Revolution 
the  settlement  of  the  interior  was  for  many  years  retarded 
by  difficulties  with  the  Indians,  and  it  was  not  until  1838 
that  the  Cherokees  were  induced  to  surrender  their  claims  to 
&  portion  of  the  territory  of  the  State.  It  will  be  seen  that, 
under  the  circumstances  which  have  been  mentioned,  the 
manufacture  of  iron  in  Georgia  was  destined  to  be  the  result 
of  comparatively  modern  enterprise. 

In  1810  there  was  a  bloomary  in  Warren  county,  a  forge 
in  Elbert  county,  and  a  nailery  in  Chatham  county.  Two 
of  these  enterprises  were  near  the  Atlantic  coast,  and  were 
doubtless  among  the  first  of  their  kind  in  the  State,  dating 
probably  from  about  1790.  The  coast  sections  of  Georgia 
did  not  possess  ample  resources  for  the  manufacture  of  iron. 
No  iron  industry  exists  there  to-day.  Sequee  bloomary  forge, 
three  miles  south  of  Clarkesville,  in  Habersham  county,  was 
built  about  1830  and  abandoned  about  1835.  Hodge's 'forge, 
in  the  same  county,  was  probably  built  at  an  earlier  date. 
Lesley  says  of  it :  "  Situation  unknown ;  history  unknown  ; 
abandoned  very  long  ago." 

Bloomary  forges  in  Cass  county,  now  Bartow  county,  were 
built  as  follows  :  Etowah,  No.  1,  in  1838 ;  Etowah,  No.  2,  in 
1841 ;  Allatoona,  about  1846.  Ivy  Log  bloomary,  in  Union 
county,  was  built  about  1839.  Aliculsie  bloomary,  in  Murray 
county,  was  built  about  1843.  A  bloomary  was  built  on  Ar- 
muchy  creek,  in  Walker  county,  about  1848.  Lookout  bloom- 
ary, in  Dade  county,  was  built  at  an  earlier  day.  All  these 
enterprises  were  abandoned  before  1856,  in  which  year,  how- 


280  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

ever,  several  other  bloomaries  of  more  recent  origin  were  in 
operation.  In  1880  only  two  bloomaries  in  the  State  were 
reported  to  be  in  use.  One  forge,  at  Allatoona,  made  blooms 
from  scrap  iron  in  that  year.  In  1890  there  was  neither  a 
forge  nor  a  bloomary  in  Georgia  that  was  active. 

The  first  furnace  in  Georgia  of  which  we  have  any  infor- 
mation was  Sequee  furnace,  near  Clarkesville,  in  Habersham 
county,  built  prior  to  1832  and  abandoned  in  1837.  Etowah 
furnace,  on  Stamp  creek,  in  Cass  county,  now  Bartow  county, 
was  built  in  1837,  abandoned  in  1844,  and  torn  down  in  1850. 
A  new  furnace,  built  by  its  side  in  1844,  is  now  in  ruins.  Al- 
latoona furnace,  in  Cass  county,  built  in  1844 ;  Union  furnace, 
in  the  same  county,  built  in  1852 ;  Lewis  furnace,  in  the  same 
county,  built  about  1847 ;  and  Cartersville  furnace,  in  the 
same  county,  built  in  1852,  have  all  been  abandoned.  Clear 
Creek  furnace,  in  Walker  county,  built  about  1852  and  rebuilt 
in  1857,  has  also  been  abandoned.  All  these  were  charcoal 
furnaces.  .  Of  the  furnaces  existing  in  Georgia  in  1880  Bartow 
county  contained  five  charcoal  furnaces  and  two  coke  furna- 
ces— seven  in  all.  Of  these  the  two  Bear  Mountain  charcoal 
furnaces,  built  in  1842,  were  the  oldest.  Four  other  furnaces 
in  the  State  were  situated  in  Polk,  Floyd,  and  Dade  counties 
— two  in  Polk  and  one  in  Floyd  using  charcoal  and  one  in 
Dade  using  coke.  Of  the  eleven  furnaces  in  the  State  in 
1880,  some  of  which  were  not  then  active,  several  have  since 
been  torn  down  or  abandoned.  Two  new  charcoal  furnaces 
have  recently  been  built — one  at  Tallapoosa,  blown  in  in  1890, 
and  one  at  Rome,  blown  in  in  1891.  Rising  Fawn  furnace,  in 
Dade  Bounty,  is  65  feet  high  by  17  feet  wide,  and  was  the 
first  furnace  in  the  United  States  to  use  the  Whitwell  hot- 
blast  stove,  blowing  in  for  the  first  time  on  June  18,  1875. 
In  1891  there  were  six  furnaces  in  Georgia,  two  of  which 
used  coke  as  fuel,  three  used  charcoal,  and  one  was  built  to 
use  either  coke  or  charcoal. 

Georgia  had  two  rolling  mills  in  1859 — Etowah,  in  Cass 
county,  built  about  1849,  and  Gate  City,  at  Atlanta,  built  in 
1858.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  this  State  had  just  two  rolling 
mills  twenty-one  years  later,  in  1880 — Atlanta,  built  in  1865, 
and  Rome,  built  in  1869.  The  latter  had  been  idle  for  sev- 
eral years  prior  to  1880  and  has  since  been  dismantled.  The 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  281 

Atlanta  rolling  mill  was  burned  on  September  21,  1881,  and 
not  rebuilt.  There  is  now  only  one  rolling  mill  in  the  State, 
a  new  mill  at  Rome,  built  in  1889  partly  to  roll  cotton-ties. 

In  1859  Lesley  thus  describes  the  Etowah  rolling  mill  and 
its  blast  furnace  and  other  connections,  located  on  the  Etowah 
river :  "  This  property  has  been  building  up  and  developing 
for  twelve  years.  On  it  there  has  been  expended  $250,000. 
It  contains  a  rolling  mill,  nail  and  spike  factory,  and  all 
necessary  apparatus;  a  blast  furnace  and  foundry,  with  full 
equipment ;  a  wheat  mill  (150  to  250  bushels  per  day),  ware- 
house, cooper-house,  hotel,  and  operative  houses,  two  corn 
grist  mills,  two  saw  mills,  and  a  coal  mine ;  all  using  not 
one-tenth  of  the  water-power  on  the  premises.  River  (BOO  feet 
wide.  Iron  ore  and  wood  are  abundant.  It  is  on  the  met- 
amorphic  rocks  of  the  gold  and  copper  belt,  both  minerals 
being  found  on  it,"  etc.  The  Etowah  Iron  Company  has  re- 
cently purchased  this  property  and  is  making  preparations 
to  develop  its  iron-ore  deposits. 

From  the  foregoing  summary  it  will  be  seen  that  the  iron 
industry  of  Georgia  is  not  now  so  prominent  as  in  former 
years.  There  does  not  seem  to  be  any  reason  why  it  should 
not  in  the  next  ten  or  twenty  years  become  much  more  act- 
ive than  it  now  is  or  ever  has  been. 


282  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 
THE  EAKLY  MANUFACTUKE  OF  IRON  IN  KENTUCKY. 

THE  first  iron  enterprise  in  Kentucky  whose  history  has 
been  preserved  was  Bourbon  furnace,  often  called  Slate  fur- 
nace, which  was  built  in  1791  on  Slate  creek,  a  branch  of 
Licking  river,  in  Bath  county,  then  Bourbon,  and  about  two 
miles  southeast  of  Owingsville.  This  is  also  the  only  furnace 
in  Kentucky  which  has  a  history  that  can  be  traced  back  to 
the  last  century.  In  his  Notes  on  the  State  of  Virginia  Jefferson 
says  that  there  were  iron  mines  "  on  Kentucky,  between  the 
Cumberland  and  Barren  rivers,"  and  also  "  between  Cumber- 
land and  Tanissee."  This  was  written  before  the  close  of  the 
Revolution.  The  whole  of  Jefferson's  reference  to  western 
iron  mines  is  as  follows : 

In  the  western  country  we  are  told  of  iron  mines  between  the  Mus- 
kingum  and  Ohio ;  of  others  on  Kentucky,  between  the  Cumberland  and 
Barren  rivers,  between  Cumberland  and  Tanissee,  on  Reedy  creek,  near  the 
Long  island,  and  on  Chestnut  creek,  a  branch  of  the  Great  Kanhaway  near 
where  it  crosses  the  Carolina  line.  What  are  called  the  iron-banks,  on  the 
Mississippi,  are  believed,  by  a  good  judge,  to  have  no  iron  in  them.  In  gen- 
eral, from  what  is  hitherto  known  of  that  country,  it  seems  to  want  iron. 

Bourbon  furnace  was  not  within  the  limits  of  any  of  these 
boundaries,  but  was  located  not  far  from  the  Ohio  river.  Nor 
is  it  probable  that  there  were  any  iron  enterprises  in  the  Ken- 
tucky portion  of  the  regions  mentioned  by  Jefferson  prior  to 
the  building  of  Bourbon  furnace.  This  furnace  was  the  first 
furnace  outside  of  the  present  limits  of  the  original  thirteen 
colonies  of  which  we  can  obtain  any  information. 

We  have  received  from  V.  B.  Young,  Esq.,  of  Owingsville, 
Kentucky,  a  very  full  historical  account  of  Bourbon  furnace, 
which  we  present  as  follows : 

In  October,  1782,  Jacob  Myers  came  from  Baltimore,  Maryland,  to  the 
region  now  embraced  in  Bath  county,  Kentucky,  but  then  in  Bourbon  coun- 
ty, and  soon  afterwards  patented  5,434  acres  of  land  on  Slate  creek.  In 
March,  1791,  he  commenced  the  erection  of  a  furnace  on  this  land,  and  on 
the  24th  of  May  following  he  sold  to  John  Cockey  Owings,  of  Baltimore, 
Christopher  Greenup,  of  Mercer  county,  Kentucky,  Walter  Beall,  of  Nelson 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  283 

county,  Kentucky,  and  Willis  Green,  of  Lincoln  county,  Kentucky,  seven- 
eighths  of  his  interest  in  the  furnace  and  in  the  land,  the  consideration 
being  £1,426  8s.  6d.  On  the  same  day  all  the  persons  mentioned  formed 
themselves  into  a  company  and  subscribed  to  an  agreement  which  stip- 
ulated that  "the  furnace  now  building  on  Slate  creek  shall  hereafter  be 
styled,  called,  and  known  by  the  name  of  the  Bourbon  furnace,  and  the 
firm  of  the  company  shall  be  John  Cockey  Owings  and  Company,  owners 
and  proprietors  of  the  Bourbon  furnace."  During  the  erection  of  the  fur- 
nace, and  afterwards  while  the  hands  employed  by  the  company  were  dig- 
ging ore,  the  workmen  had  to  be  guarded  by  men  with  guns  against  the 
Indians;  hence  it  became  necessary  to  build  a  strong  block-house  on  the 
principal  ore  bank  for  the  better  security  of  the  laborers.  The  first  blast 
made  by  the  furnace  was  in  1792. 

On  March  6,  1795,  George  Thompson,  Colonel  George  Nicholas,  John 
Breckinridge,  and  John  Hollingsworth  became  members  of  the  company, 
adding  to  its  capital  lands  and  other  property  equal  in  value  to  the  origi- 
nal investment.  On  June  27,  1798,  Christopher  Greenup  sold  his  interest 
to  George  Nicholas  and  Walter  Beall.  In  July,  1799,  George  Nicholas  died. 
On  January  15,  1800,  Walter  Beall  sold  his  interest  to  Colonel  Thomas  Dye 
Owings,  a  son  of  John  Cockey  Owings,  who  had  inherited  his  father's  inter- 
est. In  1806  Colonel  Owings  became  the  sole  owner  of  Bourbon  furnace. 
He  operated  it  successfully  until  1822,  when  he  became  involved  in  debt 
and  was  compelled  to  make  an  assignment.  The  furnace  was  then  oper- 
ated by  trustees  for  several  years,  when  it  was  sold  for  the  benefit  of  the 
creditors,  passing  into  the  hands  of  Robert  Wicklifie,  of  Lexington,  Ken- 
tucky, who  leased  it  to  Major  John  C.  Mason  and  Samuel  Herndon,  who 
operated  it  until  August,  1839,  when  its  last  blast  came  to  an  end.  The 
stack  is  still  standing. 

The  owners  of  Bourbon  furnace  built  Slate  forge,  on  Slate  creek,  three 
miles  above  the  furnace,  in  1798,  to  convert  its  pig  iron  into  bar  iron.  This 
forge  was  in  operation  until  1818.  Maria  forge,  three  miles  above  the  mouth 
of  Slate  creek,  was  built  for  the  same  purpose  in  1810  by  Joseph  and  Car- 
lisle Harrison.  It  was  in  operation  until  1840. 

Bourbon  furnace  used  the  Clinton  ore  from  two  banks  two  miles  south 
of  the  furnace — one  called  the  Howard  hill  bank  and  the  other  called  the 
Block-house  bank.  The  water-power  furnished  by  Slate  creek  was  often 
insufficient  to  keep  the  furnace  working  regularly.  The  production  of  the 
furnace  was  about  three  tons  per  day.  The  iron  made  at  the  furnace  had 
a  poor  reputation  for  strength,  but  it  was  very  hard,  which  was  due  to  the 
large  amount  of  phosphorus  it  contained. 

Bourbon  furnace  supplied  the  early  settlers  of  Kentucky  with  all  the 
castings  they  needed,  such  as,  heating  stoves,  cooking  utensils,  flat-irons, 
etc.  After  Slate  forge  wTas  built  the  blacksmiths  of  the  State  were  supplied 
by  it  with  bar  iron.  The  castings  and  bar  iron  were  hauled  in  wagons  to 
all  parts  of  the  State,  and  distributed  through  the  principal  stores  in  the 
towns.  There  are  many  heating  stoves  and  cooking  utensils  still  in-  use  in 
Kentucky  that  were  made  at  this  furnace.  Products  of  the  furtiace  and 
the  forge  were  also  hauled  to  Licking  river,  a  distance  of  seven  miles,  and 
put  into  flat-boats  and  floated  to  Cincinnati  and  Louisville  on  the  Ohio. 

In  1810  Colonel  Owings  had  a  contract  with  the  United  States  Govern- 


284  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

ment  to  furnish  cannon  balls,  grape  shot,  etc.,  to  the  navy.  He  also  fur- 
nished General  Jackson  with  cannon  balls,  grape  shot,  chain  shot,  etc.,  to 
use  against  the  British,  and  they  were  so  used  at  the  battle  of  New  Orleans 
on  the  8th  of  January,  1815.  I  have  in  my  possession  the  original  receipt 
of  General  Jackson's  sergeant-major  for  the  cannon  balls,  etc.,  and  also  the 
receipts  of  several  naval  officers. 

The  owners  of  Bourbon  furnace  carried  on  a  large  general  store.  They 
brought  their  goods  from  Philadelphia.  The  Kentucky  merchant  in  those 
early  days  traveled  all  the  way  to  Philadelphia  on  horseback,  carrying  in 
saddle-bags  the  silver  to  pay  for  his  goods.  They  brought  their  goods  in 
wagons  to  Pittsburgh,  thence  down  the  Ohio  on  flat-boats  to  the  mouth  of 
the  Limestone,  now  Maysville,  in  Mason  county,  Kentucky,  and  thence 
hauled  them  to  the  furnace,  a  distance  of  forty-five  miles.  The  company 
also  built  and  carried  on  a  grist  mill,  which  had  a  widely  extended  custom. 

The  founders  and  early  owners  of  Bourbon  furnace  were  all  remark- 
able men,  and  their  names  are  among  the  most  eminent  in  the  history  of 
Kentucky.  Jacob  Myers,  the  pioneer,  was  a  German,  and  a  man  of  very 
fine  sense.  Christopher  Greenup  was  a  Virginian  by  birth,  a  soldier  in  the 
Revolution,  a  member  of  Congress  from  Kentucky  in  1792,  and  Governor 
of  Kentucky  from  1804  to  1808.  Greenup  county 'was  named  after  him. 
He  died  in  1818  in  his  69th  year.  George  Nicholas  was  a  Virginian  by 
birth,  and  a  great  lawyer  and  a  great  statesman.  He  was  a  soldier  in  the 
Revolution,  was  a  member  of  the  convention  to  frame  a  Constitution  for 
Kentucky,  was  the  author  of  that  instrument,  and  was  the  first  Attorney- 
General  of  the  State.  John  Breckinridge  was  a  Virginian  by  birth,  and 
was  the  author  of  the  Kentucky  Resolutions  of  1798.  He  was  a  United 
States  Senator  from  .Kentucky  in  1801,  and  was  appointed  Attorney-Gen- 
eral of  the  United  States  in  1805.  He  was  the  grandfather  of  Vice-Presi- 
dent  John  C.  Breckinridge.  Walter  Beall  and  Willis  Green  were  surveyors 
from  Virginia,  and  the  latter  held  various  local  offices  in  Kentucky.  John 
Cockey  Owings  was  a  large  landholder  in  Maryland. 

The  original  of  the  following  memorandum  was  handed 
to  the  editor  of  the  Portsmouth  (Ohio)  Tribune  in  1880  by 
Mr.  L.  C.  Robinson.  It  refers  to  Bourbon  furnace. 

KENTUCKY,  ss. :  Memorandum  of  an  Agreement  made  and  Concluded 
upon  this  day  between  John  Cockey  Owings  &  Co.,  in  Iron  Works  at  the 
Bourbon  Furnace  of  the  one  part,  and  Robert  Williams  (potter)  of  the  other 
part.  Witnesseth  that  the  aforesaid  Company  doth  this  day  agree  to  give 
the  said  Williams  five  pounds  p.  month  for  three  months'  work  and  to  find 
him  provisions  during  the  time  he  shall  work  until  the  three  months  are 
expired,  and  said  Company  doth  further  agree,  in  case  the  furnace  is  not 
ready  to  blow  before  or  at  the  expiration  of  the  three  months,  if  the  water 
will  admit,  or  as  soon  as  the  water  will  admit  after  that  time,  to  give  him  p. 
month-  as  much  as  he  can  make  in  a  month  at  the  potting  Business  for  such 
time  as  said  Furnace  may  not  be  Ready  to  put  in  Blast — as  witness  our 
hands  this  second  day  of  June,  1793.  JN.  COCKEY  0 WINGS. 

...  WALTER  BEALL. 

Test:  JNO.  MOCKBEE.  CHRIST  GREENUP. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  285 

For  a  number  of  years  after  1800  the  iron  industry  of 
Kentucky  made  steady  progress.  Tench  Coxe  mentions  four 
furnaces  and  three  forges  in  1810.  One  furnace  was  in 
Estill  county,  one  in  Wayne,  and  two  were  in  Montgomery. 
One  of  the  forges  was  in  Estill  county,  one  in  Wayne,  and 
one  in  Montgomery.  His  enumeration,  however,  is  incom- 
plete, no  mention,  for  instance,  being  made  of  the  iron  en- 
terprises in  Bath  county,  which  were  in  operation  long  after 
1810.  In  the  same  year,  or  soon  afterwards,  there  were  four 
nail  factories  at  Lexington,  making  seventy  tons  of  nails  an- 
nually. 

About  1815  Richard  Deering,  a  farmer  of  Greenup  coun- 
ty, smelted  in  a  cupola  the  first  iron  ore  used  in  the  Hang- 
ing Rock  district  of  Kentucky.  His  experiment  with  the  cu- 
pola proving  to  be  successful  he  took  into  partnership  David 
and  John  Trimble,  and  these  three  persons  built  in  1817  or 
1818  one  of  the  first  furnaces  in  the  district.  It  was  called 
Argillite,  and  was  located  in  Greenup  county,  about  six  miles 
southwest  of  Greenupsburg,  upon  the  left  bank  of  the  Little 
Sandy  river.  The  stack,  which  was  25  feet  high  and  6  feet 
wide  at  the  boshes,  was  cut  in  a  cliff  of  black  slate — Hence 
the  name,  Argillite.  Lesley  says  :  "  It  was  not  a  structure, 
but  an  excavation  in  the  solid  slate  rock  of  the  cliff,  the 
archway  below  being  excavated  to  meet  it."  This  furnace 
was  operated  only  a  few  years,  when  it  was  abandoned.  Its 
product  was  always  small. 

Another  early  furnace  in  this  district  was  Pactolus,  built 
by  Ward  &  McMurtry  soon  after  1818  on  the  Little  Sandy 
river,  in  Carter  county,  above  Argillite  furnace.  It  was  soon 
abandoned.  A  forge  was  connected  with  this  furnace.  An- 
other early  enterprise  in  this  district  was  Steam  furnace,  in 
Greenup  county,  situated  about  three  miles  from  the  Ohio 
river  and  five  miles  from  Greenupsburg.  It  is  said  by  Les- 
ley to  have  been  built  in  1817  by  Leven  Shreeves  &  Brother. 
It  was  operated  with  steam.  It  was  abandoned  after  1860. 
Enterprise  furnace,  on  Tygart's  creek,  in  Greenup  county,  was 
built  in  1826,  but  Richard  Deering  is  said  to  have  erected  a 
forge  of  the  same  name  on  the  same  creek  in  1824.  Belle- 
fonte  furnace,  on  Hood's  creek,  two  and  a  half  miles  south- 
west of  Ashland,  in  Boyd  county,  was  built  in  1826  by  A. 


286  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Paull,  George  Poague,  and  others,  and  was  the  first  furnace 
in  this  county.  It  was  in  operation  in  1890. 

Between  1817  and  1834  at  least  thirteen  furnaces  were 
built  in  Greenup,  Carter,  and  Boyd  counties.  One  of  the 
earliest  of  these  was  Camp  Branch,  or  Farewell,  situated  on 
Little  Sandy  river,  fourteen  miles  from  Greenupsburg,  near 
the  Carter  county  line,  built  by  David  and  John  Trimble. 
Subsequent  to  1834  about  fifteen  other  charcoal  furnaces  were 
built  in  these  three  counties  and  in  Lawrence  county.  Most 
of  the  charcoal  furnaces  of  this  district  have  been  abandon- 
ed. A  few  excellent  bituminous  coal  and  coke  furnaces  have, 
however,  been  erected  in  late  years.  Notwithstanding  these 
additions  to  its  furnace  capacity  this  district  is  not  now  so 
prominent  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  as  it  has  been. 

About  1830  there  were  a  dozen  forges  in  Greenup,  Estill, 
Edmonson,  and  Crittenden  counties,  all  of  which,  with  one 
exception,  were  abandoned  before  1850.  Two  forges  were 
built  below  Eddyville,  in  Lyon  county,  about  1840.  All  the 
forges  mentioned  refined  pig  iron  into  blooms,  many  of 
which  found  a  market  at  Pittsburgh,  Cincinnati,  and  Ken- 
tucky rolling  mills.  A  few  years  ago  there  was  only  one 
forge  remaining  in  the  State,  Red  River,  in  Estill  county,  but 
it  has  since  been  abandoned.  If  any  bloomaries  ever  existed 
in  Kentucky  they  were  abandoned  early  in  this  century. 

In  addition  to  the  iron  enterprises  in  the  Hanging  Rock 
region  of  Kentucky  furnaces  were  built  before  1860  in  sever- 
al of  the  middle  and  western  counties  of  the  State — in  Bath, 
Russell,  Bullitt,  Nelson,  Muhlenburg,  Lyon,  Crittenden,  Trigg, 
Calloway,  and  Livingston  counties.  Two  of  these  furnaces, 
Caney  and  Clear  Creek,  were  in  Bath  county.  In  this  period 
eight  rolling  mills  were  also  built  in  Kentucky.  The  period 
from  about  1825  to  1860  witnessed  great  activity  in  the  devel- 
opment of  the  iron  industry  of  Kentucky.  Since  the  close  of 
the  civil  war  this  activity  has  not  been  maintained.  It  can 
not  be  said  that  the  State  has  devoted  that  attention  to  the 
manufacture  of  iron  which  its  position  and  resources  most 
certainly  invite. 

Kentucky  was  seventh  in  the  list  of  iron  and  steel  produc- 
ing States  in  1870  and  eleventh  in  1880.  In  1890  it  was  four- 
teenth in  rank  among  the  States  producing  pig  iron  and  it 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  287 

occupied  the  same  position  among  the  States  producing  rolled 
iron.  Of  twenty-two  furnaces  in  the  State  in  1880  eighteen 
used  charcoal  and  four  used  bituminous  coal.  In  the  same 
year  there  were  eight  rolling  mills — two  at  Covington,  two  at 
Newport,  two  at  Louisville,  one  at  Ashland,  and  one  in  Lyon 
county ;  there  were  also  two  steel  works  connected  wdth  the 
rolling  mills  at  Covington  and  Newport.  The  first  rolling 
mill  in  Kentucky  appears  to  have  been  built  at  Covington  in 
1829,  a  portion  of  its  machinery  having  been  obtained  from 
the  dismantled  Union  rolling  mill  at  Pittsburgh. 

In  1890  there  were  five  coke  furnaces  and  one  charcoal 
furnace  in  Kentucky  and  six  rolling  mills  and  one  open- 
hearth  steel  plant,  the  last  named  being  at  Covington.  A  Bes- 
semer steel  plant  was  in  course  of  erection  at  Ashland,  in  Boyd 
county.  This  place  has  in  late  years  become  prominent  as  an 
iron  centre,  having  three  active  coke  furnaces.  At  Middles- 
borough,  in  Bell  county,  an  English  company  has  recently  un- 
dertaken the  erection  of  iron  and  steel  works  on  an  extensive 
scale,  embracing  two  coke  furnaces  and  a  basic  open-hearth 
steel  plant,  none  of  which  had  been  completed  at  the  begin- 
ning of  1891.  The  South  Boston  Iron  Works  are  to  be  re- 
moved to  this  place  in  1891.  There  is  also  a  charcoal  fur- 
nace in  course  of  erection  at  Cumberland  Gap,  and  two  char- 
coal furnaces  are  also  in  course  of  erection  at  Grand  Rivers, 
in  Livingston  county. 

It  is  a  favorable  sign  that  the  coking  coals  of  Kentucky 
are  now  in  a  fair  way  to  be  developed  on  an  extensive  scale. 


288  THE    MANUFACTURE    OP     . 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 
THE  EARLY  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  TENNESSEE. 

THE  first  settlers  of  Tennessee  erected  iron  works  within 
its  limits  soon  after  the  close  of  the  Revolution.  Bishop  says 
that  a  bloomary  was  built  in  1790  at  Embreeville,  in  Washing- 
ton county.  At  Elizabethton,  on  Doe  river,  in  Carter  county, 
a  bloomary  was  built  about  1795.  Wagner's  bloomary,  on 
Roane  creek,  in  Johnson  county,  is  said  to  have  been  built 
in  this  year.  A  bloomary  was  also  erected  on  Camp  creek,  in 
Greene  county,  in  1797.  Two  bloomaries  in  Jefferson  county 
—the  Mossy  Creek  forge,  ten  miles  north  of  Dandridge,  and 
Dumpling  forge,  five  miles  west  of  Dandridge — were  built  in 
the  same  year.  About  the  same  time,  if  not  earlier,  David 
Ross,  the  proprietor  of  iron  works  in  Campbell  county,  Vir- 
ginia, erected  a  large  furnace  and  forge  at  the  junction  of  the 
two  forks  of  the  Holston  river,  in  Sullivan  county,  near  the 
Virginia  line,  on  "the  great  road  from  Knoxville  to  Phila- 
delphia." Bishop  states  an  interesting  fact  in  the  following 
words  :  "  Boats  of  twenty-five  tons  burden  could  ascend  to 
Ross's  iron  works,  nearly  1,000  miles  above  the  mouth  of  the 
Tennessee,  and  about  280  above  Nashville.  At  Long  Island, 
a  short  distance  above,  on  the  Holston,  where  the  first  per- 
manent settlement  in  Tennessee  was  made  in  1775,  boats  were 
built  to  transport  iron  and  castings  made  in  considerable 
quantities  at  these  works,  with  other  produce,  to  the  lower 
settlements  and  New  Orleans."  A  bloomary  was  built  about 
1795  below  the  mouth  of  the  Watauga,  and  another  at  the 
same  time  about  twenty-five  miles  above  the  mouth  of  French 
Broad  river  and  thirty  miles  above  Knoxville. 

All  the  above-mentioned  enterprises  were  in  East  Ten- 
nessee. In  West  Tennessee  iron  was  also  made  in  the  last 
decade  of  the  last  century.  Nashville  was  founded  in  1780, 
and  a  few  years  later  iron  ore  was  discovered  about  thirty 
miles  west  of  the  future  city.  In  1792  Cumberland  furnace 
was  erected  on  Iron  fork  of  Barton's  creek,  in  Dickson  county, 
seven  miles  northwest  of  Charlotte,  by  James  Robinson.  This 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  289 

furnace  was  rebuilt  in  1825,  and  was  in  operation  in  1888. 
Dickson  county  and  its  neighbors,  Stewart  and  Montgomery 
counties,  afterwards  became  very  prominent  in  the  manu- 
facture of  charcoal  pig  iron.  Other  counties  in  the  same  sec- 
tion of  the  State  have  also,  but  in  a  less  conspicuous  degree, 
made  iron  in  charcoal  furnaces.  The  first  furnace  in  Mont- 
gomery county  was  probably  Yellow  Creek,  situated  fourteen 
miles  southwest  of  Clarksville,  and  built  in  1802. 

The  iron  industry  of  Tennessee  made  steady  progress 
after  the  opening  of  the  present  century.  Both  furnaces  and 
bloomaries  multiplied  rapidly.  In  1856  Lesley  enumerated 
over  seventy-five  forges  and  bloomaries,  seventy-one  furnaces, 
and  four  rolling  mills  in  Tennessee,  each  of  which  had  been 
in  operation  at  some  time  after  1790.  Of  the  furnaces  twen- 
ty-nine were  in  East  Tennessee  and  forty-two  in  Middle  and 
West  Tennessee.  Fourteen  of  the  latter  were  in  Stewart  coun- 
ty, twelve  in  Montgomery,  seven  in  Dickson,  two  in  Hick- 
man,  two  in  Perry,  two  in  Decatur,  two  in  Wayne,  and  one  in 
Hardin  county.  There  were  at  one  time  forty-one  furnaces  on 
the  Cumberland  river  in  Tennessee  and  Kentucky.  The  fur- 
naces in  East  Tennessee  were  mainly  in  Sullivan  and  Carter 
counties,  Sullivan  having  five  and  Carter  seven ;  but  John- 
son, Washington,  Greene,  Cocke,  Sevier,  Monroe,  Hamilton, 
Claiborne,  Campbell,  Grainger,  and  Union  counties  each  had 
one  or  two  furnaces,  while  Roane  county  had  three.  There 
was  an  early  furnace  in  Polk  county,  which  is  not  noted  by 
Lesley  but  is  mentioned  by  Bishop.  The  forges  and  blooma- 
ries were  mainly  located  in  East  Tennessee.  Johnson  county 
contained  fifteen,  Carter  ten,  Sullivan  six,  Washington  three, 
Greene  ten,  Campbell  seven,  Blount  four,  Roane  seven,  Rhea 
three,  and  a  few  other  counties  one  and  two  each.  Nearly  all 
of  these  were  bloomaries.  In  West  Tennessee  there  were  less 
than- a  dozen  refinery  forges  and  one  or  two  bloomaries.  The 
forges  of  West  Tennessee,  like  those  of  Kentucky,  were  large- 
ly employed  from  about  1825  to  1860  in  the  manufacture  of 
blooms  for  rolling  mills,  many  of  which  found  a  market  in 
the  Ohio  valley.  Most  of  the  furnaces  and  all  of  the  forges 
enumerated  by  Lesley  have  long  been  abandoned,  and  all  of 
the  bloomaries  except  two  or  three  have  also  been  abandoned. 
There  are  now  in  Tennessee  ten  charcoal  furnaces. 


290  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

In  1883  there  were  in  this  State  eight  coke  furnaces,  all  of 
recent  origin,  four  rolling  mills,  and  two  steel  works.  In  1890 
there  were  ten  completed  coke  furnaces  and  several  building, 
four  rolling  mills,  and  three  steel  works,  two  of  which  were 
connected  with  the  rolling  mills.  Cumberland  rolling  mill, 
on  the  left  bank  of  the  Cumberland  river,  in  Stewart  county, 
was  built  in  1829  and  was  probably  the  first  rolling  mill  in 
the  State.  It  was  the  only  one  in  Tennessee  as  late  as  1856. 

Since  the  close  of  the  civil  war  Chattanooga  has  become 
the  most  prominent  iron  centre  in  Tennessee,  having  several 
iron  enterprises  of  its  own  and  others  in  its  vicinity.  Prior 
to  the  war,  in  1854,  Bluff  furnace  had  been  built  by  Robert 
Cravens,  James  A.  Whiteside,  and  James  P.  Boyce,  to  use 
charcoal.  In  1857  Lesley  said  of  this  furnace :  "  The  bitu- 
minous coal  of  the  Raccoon  mines,  now  leased  and  worked 
by  the  Etna  Mining  Company,  can  be  brought  to  the  fur- 
nace by  railway ;  it  is  excellent  for  coke,  and  some  thoughts 
are  entertained  of  turning  the  present  furnace  into  a  coke 
furnace."  In  1859  the  limestone  stack  was  torn  down  by  the 
East  Tennessee  Iron  Company,  of  which  James  Henderson, 
of  New  York,  was  the  manager,  and  a  new  iron  cupola  stack, 
11  feet  wide  at  the  boshes,  was  erected  in  its  place,  and  Rac- 
coon coke  was  thereafter  used  as  fuel.  The  new  furnace  was 
blown  in  in  May,  1860,  but  owing  to  a  short  supply  of  coke 
the  blast  lasted  only  long  enough  to  permit  the  production  of 
about  500  tons  of  pig  iron.  All  the  machinery  and  appoint- 
ments of  the  furnace  worked  satisfactorily.  The  furnace  was 
started  on  a  second  blast  on  the  6th  of  November,  the  day  of 
the  Presidential  election,  but  political  complications  and  the 
demoralized  state  of  the  furnace  workmen  were  obstacles  too 
great  to  be  overcome,  and  the  furnace  soon  chilled  from  the 
cause  last  mentioned,  and  in  December  Mr.  Henderson  aban- 
doned the  enterprise  and  returned  to  New  York.  In  the  sum- 
mer of  1862,  before  the  Union  troops  took  possession  of  Chat- 
tanooga, the  machinery  of  the  furnace  was  removed  to  Ala- 
bama by  Giles  Edwards,  who  used  it  in  the  equipment  of  a 
small  charcoal  furnace  near  the  site  of  the  present  town  of 
Anniston.  This  furnace  was  active  for  about  two  years.  The 
stack  of  the  furnace  at  Chattanooga  was  used  by  the  Union 
troops  as  a  lime  kiln,  by  whom  it  was  subsequently  torn  down. 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  291 

This  was  the  first  coke  furnace  in  either  of  the  States  of 
Tennessee  or  Alabama,  which  are  now  the  theatre  of  such 
great  present  and  prospective  activity  in  the  manufacture  of 
pig  iron  with  this  fuel. 

The  first  coke  furnace  that  was  built  in  the  South  after 
the  war  was  the  first  of  the. two  Rockwood  furnaces,  at  Rock- 
wood,  Roane  county,  Tennessee.  This  furnace  was  built  in 
1867  by  the  Rdane  Iron  Company,  of  which  General  J.  T. 
Wilder  and  Captain  H.  S.  Chamberlain  were  the  leading 
spirits.  It  was  successful  from  the  start  and  is  still  active. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war,  in  1861,  S.  B.  Lowe  com- 
menced the  erection  of  the  Vulcan  rolling  mill  at  Chatta- 
nooga, to  roll  bar  iron.  This  mill  was  not  finished  in  1863, 
when  it  was  burned  by  the  Union  forces.  Mr.  Lowe  rebuilt 
the  mill  in  1866.  It  was  owned  and  operated  by  .the  South 
Tredegar  Iron  Company  in  1890.  In  1864  a  rolling  mill  to 
re-roll  rails  was  built  by  the  United  States  Government,  un- 
der the  supervision  of  John  Fritz,  then  superintendent  of 
the  Bethlehem  iron  works.  It  was  afterwards  owned  and  op- 
erated by  the  Roane  Iron  Company.  The  first  open-hearth 
steel  made  in  any  Southern  State  was  made  by  the  Siemens- 
Martin  process  at  Chattanooga  by  this  company  on  the  6th 
day  of  June,  1878,  and  'in  December  of  the  same  year  the 
first  steel  rails  ever  made  in  the  South  were  rolled  at  its 
works.  Subsequently  Bessemer  steel  works  were  built  by 
this  company,  its  supply  of  pig  iron  coming  from  the  Rock- 
wood  furnaces  and  the  iron  ore  coming  from  the  Cranberry 
mines.  They  made  their  first  blow  on  May  7,  1887,  and  on 
that  day  the  first  Bessemer  steel  rail  ever  made  in  the 
South  outside  of  Wheeling  was  successfully  rolled  at  these 
works,  but  the  rolling,  of  steel  rails  by  this  company  has  not 
since  been  actively  continued.  The  first  basic  open-hearth 
steel  ever  made  in  Tennessee  was  made  at  the  works  of  this 
company  by  the  Southern  Iron  Company  on  the  15th  of  Sep- 
tember, 1890.  Lookout  rolling  mill  was  built  by  the  Tennes- 
see Iron  and  Steel  Company  in  1876,  and  was  started  in  Oc- 
tober of  that  year.  Lewis  Scofield  was  at  the  time  the  presi- 
dent of  the  company. 

S.  B.  Lowe  died  at  Chattanooga  on  April  13,  1891,  aged 
about  63  years. 


292  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

The  prominence  of  Chattanooga  as  an  iron  centre  is  in 
part  due  to  the  excellent  bituminous  coal  which  is  found  in 
the  neighborhood  and  in  part  to  its  superior  transportation 
facilities.  Next  to  Chattanooga  the  most  prominent  iron  cen- 
tre in  Tennessee  is  Knoxville,  which  has  a  varied  and  pros- 
perous iron  industry.  The  Knoxville  Car  Wheel  Company 
many  years  ago  established  a  high  reputation  for  its  car 
wheels,  which  were  made  from  pig  iron  produced  from  lim- 
onite  ores  at  Carter  and  other  furnaces  in  East  Tennessee. 
Nashville  and  South  Pittsburg  are  also  growing  iron  centres. 

Carter  furnace,  on  Stony  creek,  a  branch  of  the  Watauga, 
was  abandoned  a  few  years  ago.  It  was  one  of  the  last  fur- 
naces in  the  country  to  obtain  its  blast  from  a  pair  of  square 
wooden  cylinders,  or  "  tubs,"  driven  by  water-power.  The 
pioneer  Cumberland  furnace,  which  was  built  in  1792,  was 
blown  by  a  trompe. 

Tennessee  is  destined  to  become  much  more  prominent  in 
the  manufacture  of  iron  than  it  has  ever  been.  It  will  owe 
this  prominence  partly  to  the  abundance  of  good  bituminous 
coal  which  it  possesses,  but  partly  also  to  the  improvements 
in  the  manufacture  of  charcoal  pig  iron  which  have  already 
been  adopted  in  many  instances  in  this  State,  and  partly  to 
the  adaptability  to  the  basic  steel  process  of  pig  iron  made 
from  its  ores.  Of  the  good  quality  of  Tennessee  ores  for 
general  purposes  nothing  needs  to  be.  said. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  293 

CHAPTER  XXIX. 
THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  ALABAMA. 

THE  oldest  furnace  in  Alabama  mentioned  by  Lesley  was 
built  about- 1818  a  few  miles  west  of  Russellville,  in  Franklin 
county,  and  abandoned  in  1827.  This  unsuccessful  venture 
appears  to  have  had  a  dispiriting  effect  on  other  schemes  to 
build  furnaces  in  Alabama,  as  we  do  not  hear  of  the  erection 
of  any  others  for  many  years  after  it  was  abandoned.  A  fur- 
nace was  built  at  Polksville,  in  Calhoun  county,  in  1843  ;  one 
at  Round  Mountain,  in  Cherokee  county,  in  1853 ;  and  Shelby 
furnace,  at  Shelby,  in  Shelby  county,  in  1848.  These  were  all 
charcoal  furnaces,  and  were  the  only  ones  in  Alabama  enu- 
merated by  Lesley  in  1856.  The  total  product  in  that  year  of 
the  three  last-named  furnaces  was  1,495  gross  tons  of  pig  iron. 
Shelby  furnace  was  built  by  Horace  Ware,  who  many  years 
afterwards  added  a  small  foundry  and  a  small  mill  for  roll- 
ing cotton-ties  and  bar  iron.  The  furnace  was  burned  in 
1858,  but  was  immediately  rebuilt.  The  mill  was  commenc- 
ed in  1859,  and  on  the  llth  of  April,  1860,  the  first  iron  was 
rolled.  It  was  burned  in  1865  by  General  Wilson's  com- 
mand of  Union  cavalry  and  has  not  been  rebuilt.  Part  of 
the  machinery  was,  however,  removed  to  Helena,  in  Shelby 
county,  a  few  years  afterwards,  where  a  rolling  mill  was  built 
in  1872  and  is  now  in  operation.  In  place  of  the  original  fur- 
nace at  Shelby  there  are  now  two  modern  charcoal  furnaces. 

Alabama  had  a  bloomary  two  and  a  half  miles  southwest 
of  Montevallo,  in  Shelby  county,  in  1825 ;  several  bloomaries 
in  Bibb  county  between  1830  and  1840;  one  in  Talladega 
county  in  1842  ;  two  in  Calhoun  county  in  1843 ;  and  others  in 
various  counties  at  later  periods.  In  1856  Lesley  mentioned 
seventeen  forges  and  bloomaries,  mostly  the  latter,  as  having 
been  built  at  various  periods  prior  to  that  year,  about  one- 
half  of  which  were  then  in  operation,  producing  252  tons  of 
blooms  and  bar  iron.  Since  1856  all  these  forges  and  blooma- 
ries in  Alabama  have  disappeared.  Most  of  them  were  blown 
with  the  trompe  and  the  remainder  with  wooden  "tubs." 


294  THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 

It  will  be  noticed  that  as  late  as  1856  Alabama  possessed 
a  very  small  iron  industry.  During  the  civil  war  several 
new  iron  enterprises  were  undertaken.  A  furnace  in  Sanford 
county  was  built  in  1861 ;  Cornwall  furnace,  at  Cedar  Bluff, 
in  Cherokee  county,  was  built  in  1862 ;  a  second  Shelby  fur- 
nace, in  Shelby  county,  to  take  the  place  of  the  original  stack, 
was  built  in  1863 ;  Alabama  furnace,  in  Talladega  county,  was 
built  in  1863,  burned  by  General  Wilson  in  April,  1865,  and 
rebuilt  in  1873.  Two  furnaces  and  a  small  rolling  mill  were 
built  at  Brierfield,  in  Bibb  county,  in  1863  and  1864.  All 
the  furnaces  were  built  to  use  charcoal.  The  Brierfield  roll- 
ing mill  was  first  used  for  rolling  bar  iron  and  rails.  In  1863 
or  early  in  1864  it  was  sold  to  the  Confederate  Government, 
by  which  it  was  operated  until  1865,  when  it  was  burned  by 
the  Union  troops  under  General  Wilson.  It  was  rebuilt  after 
the  war,  and  for  some  time  was  used  to  roll  bar  iron  and 
cotton-ties,  principally  the  latter.  This  mill  was  again  re- 
built in  1882  and  1883. 

The  following  interesting  history  of  the  Shelby  furnace 
and  rolling  mill,  and  of  the  part  taken  by  them  in  supply- 
ing the  Southern  Confederacy  with  iron  for  its  military  op- 
erations, was  sent  to  us  in  1888  by  the  assistant  secretary  of 
the  Shelby  Iron  Company,  Mr.  E.  T.  Witherby. 

The  first  blast  furnace  erected  here  went  into  blast  in  1848.  Horace 
Ware  was  its  proprietor.  In  1854  Mr.  Robert  Thomas  made  iron  in  a  forge 
near  here.  This  iron  was  sent  to  England  and  returned  in  razors  and 
knives.  In  1859  Mr.  Ware  began  the  erection  of  a  rolling  mill.  It  was 
completed  and  started  in  the  spring  of  1860.  In  1862  Mr.  Ware  sold  his 
property  to  the  Shelby  County  Iron  Manufacturing  Company,  which  erect- 
ed a  new  furnace,  the  one  which  we  have  recently  torn  down,  and  on 
whose  site  we  are  erecting  a  new  stack.  The  rolling  mill  was  enlarged  in 
1862  and  was  operated  continuously  until  March  31,  1865,  when  it  was  de- 
stroyed by  General  Wilson  of  the  Union  army.  It  was  in  this  mill,  in 
1864,  that  the  plates  were  rolled  for  the  armor  of  the  ironclad  ram  Ten- 
nessee. Judge  James  W.  Lapsley,  one  of  the  stockholders  and  directors  of 
the  present  Shelby  Iron  Company,  was  made  a  prisoner  by  the  Union 
forces  in  1863  while  in  Kentucky  looking  for  puddlers  for  this  mill. 

When  I  came  here,  nearly  twenty  years  ago,  we  had  plates,  merchant 
bars,  and  strap  rails  on  hand  made  entirely  of  Shelby  iron  and  rolled  in 
this  mill.  Some  of  the  plates,  known  to  us  now  as  the  "gunboat  iron," 
are  still  in  our  store  house,  but  they  have  been  slowly  disappearing  under 
the  demand  of  our  blacksmiths  for  an  "  extra  good  piece  of  iron  "  for  "  this 
job  "  or  "  that  particular  place,"  etc.  Some  of  these  plates  are  8  inches  by 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  295 

3  inches  and  others  11  inches  by  5  inches,  and  of  various  lengths;  orig- 
inally they  were,  perhaps,  10  feet  long. 

Shelby  pig  iron  was  also  shipped  to  the  Confederate  arsenal  and  found- 
ry at  Selma,  Alabama,  in  1864,  where  the  Tennessee  was  constructed  and 
fitted  out.  This  iron  doubtless  went  into  guns  and  other  castings  for  this 
vessel.  Catesby  ap  Jones  was  superintendent  of  the  arsenal,  and  with  his 
senior  in  rank,  Franklin  Buchanan,  both  pupils  of  that  sea-god,  Matthew 
Calbraith  Perry,  wrought  out  the  Tennessee.  They  were  as  full  of  progress- 
ive ideas  regarding  steam  and  armor  as  their  master,  and  nothing  but  the 
scanty  means  at  their  disposal  prevented  a  much  more  formidable  ironclad 
than  the  Tennessee  from  being  set  afloat.  Car-wheel  makers  are  now  the 
exclusive  users  of  our  iron. 

The  existence  of  bituminous  coal  in  Alabama  was  first 
observed  in  1834  by  Dr.  Alexander  Jones,  of  Mobile,  but  little 
was  done  to  develop  the  ample  coal  resources  of  the  State  un- 
til after  the  close  of  the  civil  war,  when  it  was  found  that  the 
coal  in  the  neighborhood  of  Birmingham  and  at  other  places 
would  produce  excellent  coke  for  blast  furnaces,  and  that  at 
least  two  coal  fields — the  Black  Warrior  and  Coosa — were  so 
extensive  as  to  set  at  rest  all  apprehension  concerning  a  con- 
stant supply  of  coal  for  a  long  period  of  time.  These  discov- 
eries, joined  to  the  possession  of  an  abundant  supply  of  good 
ores,  at  once  gave  Alabama  prominence  as  a  State  which 
would  in  a  few  years  boast  a  large  iron  industry,  and  this 
promise  has  been  fulfilled.  Birmingham  is  now  the  centre 
of  the  most  extensive  manufacture  of  coke  pig  iron  in  the 
Southern  States.  There  are  also  at  Birmingham  and  its  vi- 
cinity several  rolling  mills,  all  built  during  the  last  few  years. 
The  first  rolling  mill  at  Birmingham  was  built  in  1880.  The 
rapid  growth  of  this  place  as  a  centre  of  iron  production  is 
one  of  the  marvels  of  our  wonderful  industrial  development, 
both  North  and  South,  since  the  close  of  the  war.  But  the 
manufacture  of  charcoal  pig  iron  in  Alabama  has  also  grown 
rapidly  since  the  close  of  the  war,  and  the  State  can  now 
boast  more  charcoal  furnaces  than,  ever  before  in  its  history. 

Colonel  J.  W.  Sloss  was  the  pioneer  in  the  coke  pig-iron 
industry  of  Alabama.  In  1876  he  and  his  associates  built 
the  Eureka  coke  furnace  at  Oxmoor.  Subsequently  he  was 
instrumental  in  developing  the  celebrated  Pratt  seam  of  cok- 
ing coal.  Colonel  Sloss  was  born  in  Alabama  in  1820  and 
died  on  Ma^  4, 1890.  The  first  furnace  at  Birmingham  was 
Alice  furnace,  built  by  H.  F.  DeBardeleben  in  1879  and  1880. 


296 


THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 


It  was  put  in  blast  on  November  23,  1880.  It  was  followed 
by  the  first  of  the  Sloss  furnaces,  which  was  put  in  blast  on 
April  12,  1882. 

As  Alabama  is  the  last  of  the  Southern  States  which  has 
an  iron  industry  worthy  of  special  consideration  we  will  here 
present  the  record  of  the  marvelous  progress  in  the  produc- 
tion of  pig  iron  made  by  all  the  Southern  ironmaking  States 
from  1880  to  1890.  In  this  table,  following  the  ante  bettum 
geographical  divisions,  we  class  Maryland  among  the  South- 
ern States. 


STATES. 

Net  tons  of  2,000  pounds. 

1880. 

1882. 

1884. 

1886. 

1888. 

1889. 

1890. 

Alabama  
Tennessee 

77,190 
70,873 
29,934 
70,338 
57,708 
27,321 
61,437 
2,500 

112,765 
137,602 
87,731 
73,220 
66,522 
42,440 
54,524 
1,321 
1,150 

189,664 
134,597 
157,483 
55,231 
45,052 
42,655 
27,342 
5,140 
435 

283,859 
199,166 
156,250 
98,618 
54,844 
46,490 
30,502 
3,250 
2,200 

449,492 
267,931 
197,396 
95,259 
56,790 
39,397 
17,606 
6,587 
2,400 

791,425 
294,655 
251,356 
117,900 
42,518 
27,559 
33,847 
4,544 
2,898 

914,940 
299,741 
327,912 
144,970 
53,604 
32,687 
165,559 
10,865 
3,181 

Virginia 

West  Virginia 

Xentucky  .       

Georgia  

Maryland  

Texas  

North  Carolina 

Total  

397,301 

577,275 

657,599 

875,179 

1,132,858 

1,566,702 

1,953,459 

From  1880  to  1883  Alabama  more  than  doubled  its  pro- 
duction of  pig  iron ;  from  1883  to  1888  it  was  again  more 
than  doubled ;  and  from  1888  to  1890  it  was  once  more 
doubled. 

Late  in  1890  there  were  thirty-seven  completed  coke  fur- 
naces in  Alabama  and  two  in  course  of  erection,  and  fifteen 
•completed  charcoal  furnaces  and  others  that  were  projected. 
At  the  same  time  there  were  in  Alabama  eight  completed 
rolling  mills  and  others  in  course  of  erection.  There  was 
a  small  steel  plant  at  Birmingham,  and  a  larger  plant  was 
in  course  of  erection  at  Fort  Payne  and  others  were  project- 
ed. It  can  not  be  said,  however,  that  Alabama  has  yet  made 
any  noteworthy  progress  in  the  establishment  of  a  steel  in- 
dustry. Its  strength  has  thus  far  been  mainly  devoted  to  the 
manufacture  of  pig  iron. 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  297 


CHAPTER   XXX. 

PRIMITIVE   CHARACTERISTICS    OF  THE    SOUTHERN 
IRON   INDUSTRY. 

THE  establishment  at  an  early  day  of  so  many  charcoal 
furnaces  and  bloomaries  in  Western  North  Carolina  and  East 
Tennessee,  sections  of  our  country  remote  from  the  sea-coast 
and  from  principal  rivers,  is  an  interesting  fact  in  the  iron 
history  of  the  country.   The  people  who  built  these  furnaces 
and  bloomaries  were   not  only  courageous   and  enterprising:, 
but  they  appear  to  have  been  born  with  a  genius  for  mak-  ( 
ing  iron.     With  scarcely  an  exception  they  were  Scotch-Irish  ; 
emigrants  from  the  North  of  Ireland  or  their  descendants.! 
Wherever  they  went  they  seem  to  have  searched  for  iron  ore,/ 
and  having  found  it  their  small  charcoal  furnaces  and  bloom-1 
aries  soon  followed,  the  furnaces  to  produce  simple  castings 
and  the  bloomaries  to  make  bar  iron.     No  pioneers  in  any 
of  the  States  of  the  Union  have  shown  more  intelligent  ap- 
preciation of  the  value  of  an  iron  industry  than  the  people 
of  North  Carolina  and  Tennessee,  and  none  have  been  more 
prompt  to  establish  it.     In  a  less  degree  but  upon  precisely 
the  same  lines  of  activity  the  pioneers  of  Northern  Georgia 
and  Northern  Alabama  have  shown  praiseworthy  enterprise. 
It  is  true  that  the  aim  of  all  these  people  until  in  very  re- 
cent years  has  been  mainly  to  supply  their  own  wants,  but 
this  is  a  motive  to  be  commended,  and  no  community  should 
be  found  fault  with  if  a  lack  of  capital  and  of  means  of  trans- 
portation prevents  it  from  cultivating  a  commercial  spirit. 

The  enterprise  of  the  early  ironworkers  of  all  the  States 
and  sections  above  mentioned  assumes  a  picturesque  aspect 
when  viewed  in  connection  with  the  primitive  methods  of 
manufacture  which  were  employed  by  them  and  which  have 
been  continued  in  use  until  the  present  day,  when  they  may 
be  said  to  have  at  last  yielded  to  modern  methods.  Their 
charcoal  furnaces  were  blown  through  one  tuyere  with  wood- 
en "  tubs  "  adjusted  to  attachments  which  were  slow  in  mo- 
tion and  which  did  not  make  the  best  use  of  the  water-power 


298  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

that  was  often  insufficiently  supplied  by  mountain  streams 
of  limited  volume.  A  ton  or  two  of  iron  a  day,  usually  in 
the  shape  of  castings,  was  a  good  yield.  The  bloomaries, 
with  scarcely  an  exception,  were  furnished  with  the  trompe, 
or  water-blast,  a  small  stream  with  a  suitable  fall  supplying 
both  the  blast  for  the  fires  and  the  power  which  turned  the 
wheel  that  moved  the  big  hammer.  Of  cast-iron  cylinders, 
steam-power,  two  and  three  tuyeres,  the  hot-blast,  and  other 
valuable  improvements  in  the  charcoal-iron  industry  these 
people  knew  but  little,  and  that  little  was  mainly  hearsay. 
They  were  pioneers  and  frontiersmen  in  every  sense;  from 
the  great  world  of  invention  and  progress  they  were  shut  out 
by  mountains  and  streams  and  hundreds  of  miles  of  un- 
subdued forest.  Nor  would  other  than  primitive  methods  of 
manufacturing  iron  have  been  adapted  to  their  wants  and 
their  isolated  condition.  It  is  to  their  credit  that  they  dil- 
igently sought  to  utilize  the  resources  which  they  found 
under  their  feet,  and  that  they  made  good  use  of  the  only 
means  for  the  accomplishment  of  this  purpose  of  which 
they  had  any  accurate  knowledge. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  daring  men  who  pushed  their 
way  into  the  wilds  of  Western  North  Carolina  and  East  Ten- 
nessee in  the  last  century,  and  who  set  up  their  small  furna- 
ces and  bloomaries  when  forts  yet  took  the  place  of  hamlets, 
founded  an  iron  industry  which  has  only  lately  yielded  the 
primitive  features  which  so  long  characterized  it.  Less  than 
ten  years  ago  there  were  furnaces  still  in  operation  .in  these 
sections  which  used  wooden  "tubs,"  and  there  were  in  Ten- 
nessee about  two  dozen  bloomaries  and  in  North  Carolina  a 
dozen  or  more  which  were  in  all  respects  the  counterparts  in 
construction  of  those  which  the  pioneers  established.  Nearly 
every  one  of  these  bloomaries  was  blown  with  the  trompe, 
and  in  all  other  respects  they  were  as  barren  of  modern  ap- 
pliances as  if  the  world's  iron  industry  and  the  world  itself 
had  stood  still  for  a  hundred  years.  They  were  fitfully  op- 
erated, as  the  wants  of  their  owners  or  of  the  neighboring 
farmers  and  blacksmiths  required,  or  as  the  supply  of  water 
for  the  trompes  and  hammers  would  permit.  "  Thundergust 
forges"  is  an  irreverent  term  that  was  frequently  applied  to 
them.  They  furnished  their  respective  neighborhoods  with 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  299 

iron  for  horseshoes,  wagon-tires,  and  harrow-teeth.  Mr.  J. 
B.  Killebrew,  of  Nashville,  informed  us  a  few  years  ago  that 
throughout  the  counties  of  Johnson  and  Carter  in  Tennessee, 
where  many  of  these  bloomaries  were  located,  bar  iron  was 
still  used  as  currency.  He  then  said :  "  Iron  is  taken  in  ex- 
change for  shoes,  coffee,  sugar,  calico,  salt,  and  domestic  and 
other  articles  used  by  the  people  of  the  country.  It  is  con- 
sidered a  legal  tender  in  the  settlement  of  all  dues  and  lia- 
bilities. This  bar  iron,  after  being  collected  by  the  mer- 
chants, is  sent  out  and  sold  in  Knoxville,  Bristol,  and  other 
points  affording  a  market."  The  same  usage  prevailed  in 
some  other  Southern  States  not  many  years  ago,  and  it  pre- 
vailed in  many  Northern  States  long  after  they  began  to 
make  iron  a  century  or  two  ago.  In  New  England  the  sala- 
ries of  some  of  the  preachers  were  once  paid  in  bar  iron. 

The  explanation  of  the  survival  in  this  country  and  until 
a  late  day  of  primitive  methods  of  making  iron  which  had 
long  been  abandoned  by  progressive  communities  lies  in  the 
fact  that  the  obstacles  to  free  intercourse  with  other  communi- 
ties which  hedged  about  the  pioneers  of  whom  we  are  writing 
have  never  been  broken  down  and  have  only  recently  been 
modified.  Few  of  the  mountains  and  streams  and  forests  of 
these  sections  had  been  tunneled,  or  bridged,  or  traversed  by 
modern  means  of  communication  twenty  years  ago.  The  iron 
horse  had  made  but  slow  progress  in  bringing  this  part  of 
our  country  into  association  with  other  sections.  There  were 
no  canals,  and  good  roads  were  scarce.  The  pioneers  were 
cut  off  by  their  isolated  situation  and  their  poverty  from  all 
intimate  relations  with  the  outside  world. 

Until  a  few  years  ago  there  were  some  bloomaries  still 
left  in  Southwestern  Virginia  which  were  similar  in  all  re- 
spects to  those  of  Western  North  Carolina  and  East  Tennes- 
see, and  which  were  used  for  precisely  similar  purposes.  But 
the  manufacture  of  iron  in  bloomaries  was  never  so  promi- 
nent a  branch  of  the  iron  industry  of  Virginia  as  of  the 
other  two  States  mentioned.  Virginia  learned  at  an  early 
day  to  convert  the  pig  iron  of  its  furnaces  into  bar  iron  in 
refinery  forges.  It  was  settled  long  before  Western  North 
Carolina,  or  Tennessee,  or  Georgia,  or  Alabama,  and  it  had 
from  the  first  an  active  commerce  with  Europe  and  with  the 


300  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

other  colonies  along  the  Atlantic  coast.  Its  environments 
were  favorable  to  the  acquisition  of  progressive  ideas  in  the 
manufacture  of  iron. 

But  old  things  must  pass  away,  even  in  the  iron  industry 
of  the  mountain  regions  of  the  Southern  States.  The  trans- 
formation in  Tennessee  and  Alabama  has  already  taken  place. 
North  Carolina,  with  its  magnificent  iron  and  other  resources, 
must  soon  feel  the  pulse  of  a  new  industrial  life.  Georgia 
has  at  least  abandoned  methods  which  are  no  longer  profit- 
able. Before  another  century  is  far  advanced  the  sons  of 
the  people  of  whom  we  have  been  writing  will  wonder  that 
the  old  ways  of  making  iron  stayed  with  their  fathers  as 
long  as  they  did. 

Nevertheless  our  sympathy  goes  out  to  these  old  and  dy- 
ing ways,  which  well  served  the  people  of  this  country  in  the 
early  days.  Among  the  treasures  of  our  office  is  a  piece  of 
bar  iron,  made  in  a  Catalan  forge  in  Virginia,  which  has  the 
ring  of  the  best  steel,  and  many  of  our  readers  know  of  pots 
and  kettles,  still  perfect  and  in  all  respects  of  the  neatest 
workmanship,  which  were  cast  at  the  old-fashioned  furnaces 
and  are  now  precious  heir-looms,  having  faithfully  minister- 
ed to  the  wants  of  generations  that  are  now  gone. 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  301 

CHAPTER  XXXI. 
THE  EARLY  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN   OHIO. 

THE  beginning  of  the  iron  industry  of  Ohio  is  cotempo- 
rary  with  the  admission  of  the  State  into  the  Union.  It  was 
admitted  in  1802,  and  in  1803  its  first  furnace,  Hopewell,  was 
commenced  by  Daniel  Eaton,  and  in  1804  it  was  finished. 
The  furnace  stood  on  the  west  side  of  Yellow  creek,  about 
one  and  a  quarter  miles  from  its  junction  with  the  Mahoning 
river,  in  the  township  of  Poland,  in  Mahoning  county.  On 
the  same  stream,  three-fourths  of  a  mile  from  its  mouth, 
and  on  the  farm  on  which  the  furnace  of  the  Struthers  Fur- 
nace Company  now  stands,  in  the  town  of  Struthers,  another 
furnace  was  built  in  1806  by  Robert  Montgomery  and  John 
Struthers.  This  furnace  was  called  Montgomery.  Thomas 
Struthers  says :  "  These  furnaces  were  of  about  equal  capac- 
ity, and  would  yield  about  two  and  a  half  or  three  tons  each 
per  day.  The  metal  was  principally  run  into  moulds  for 
kettles,  bake-ovens,  flat-irons,  stoves,  andirons,  and  such  other 
articles  as  the  needs  of  a  new  settlement  required,  and  any 
surplus  into  pigs  and  sent  to  the  Pittsburgh  market."  The 
ore  was  obtained  in  the  neighborhood.  Hopewell  furnace  is 
said  by  Mr.  Struthers  to  have  had  a  rocky  bluff  for  one  of  its 
sides.  It  was  in  operation  in  1807,  but  it  was  soon  afterwards 
blown  out  finally.  Montgomery  furnace  was  in  operation  un- 
til 1812,  when,  Mr.  Struthers  says,  "  the  men  were  drafted  into 
the  war  and  it  was  never  started  again."  This  furnace  stood 
"  on  the  north  side  of  Yellow  creek,  in  a  hollow  in  the  bank." 
We  are  informed  by  Hon.  John  M.  Edwards,  of  Youngstown, 
that  about  1807  Hopewell  furnace  was  sold  by  Eaton  to  Mont- 
gomery, Clendenin  &  Co.,  who  were  then  the  owners  of  Mont- 
gomery furnace,  John  Struthers  having  sold  his  interest  in 
this  furnace,  or  part  of  it,  to  David  Clendenin  in  1807  and 
Robert  Alexander  and  James  Mackey  having  about  the  same 
time  become  part  owners. 

The  above-mentioned  enterprises  were  the  first  furnaces  in 
Ohio,  and,  as  will  be  observed,  they  were  both  on  the  West- 


302  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

ern  Reserve.  There  were  other  early  iron  enterprises  on  the 
Reserve.  At  Nilestown,  now  Niles,  in  Trumbull  county,  as 
we  are  informed  by  Colonel  Charles  Whittlesey,  of  Cleveland, 
James  Heaton  built  a  forge  in  1809,  for  the  manufacture  of 
bar  iron  from  "  the  pig  of  the  Yellow  Creek  furnace,"  Mont- 
gomery furnace.  "  This  forge  produced  the  first  hammered 
bars  in  the  State."  It  continued  in  operation  until  1838. 
About  1812  James  Heaton  built, a  furnace  at  Nilestown,  near 
the  mouth  of  Mosquito  creek,  where  the  Union  school  build- 
ing now  stands.  It  was  called  Mosquito  Creek  furnace.  For 
many  years  it  used  bog  ore,  the  product  being  stoves  and 
other  castings.  It  was  in  operation  until  1856,  when  it  was 
abandoned. 

About  1816  Aaron  Norton  built  a  furnace  at  Middlebury, 
near  Akron,  in  Summit  county,  and  in  1819  Asaph  Whittle- 
sey built  a  forge  on  the  Little  Cuyahoga,  near  Middlebury. 
A  furnace  at  Tallmadge,  in  the  same  county,  was  built  about 
the  same  time.  These  two  furnaces  were  in  operation  until 
about  1835.  Bog  ore  was  used. 

The  beginning  of  the  iron  industry  in  the  counties  on 
Lake  Erie  probably  dates  from  1825,  when  Arcole  furnace  was 
built  in  Madison  township,  in  the  present  county  of  Lake,  by 
Root  &  Wheeler.  Concord  furnace,  in  the  same  county,  was 
built  by  Fields  &  Stickney  about  1828.  In  1830  John  Wil- 
keson  became  the  owner  of  Arcole  furnace.  Geauga  furnace, 
one  mile  north  of  Painesville,  in  Lake  county,  and  Railroad 
furnace,  at  Perry,  in  Geauga  county,  were  built  about  1828, 
the  former  by  an  incorporated  company  and  the  latter  by 
Thorndike  &  Drury,  of  Boston.  During  the  next  ten  or 
twelve  years  many  other  furnaces  were  built  near  Lake  Erie, 
in  Ashtabula,  Cuyahoga,  Erie,  Huron,  and  Lorain  counties. 
At  a  still  later  period  other  charcoal  furnaces  were  built  in 
the  lake  counties.  All  these  lake  furnaces,  writes  John  Wil- 
keson  in  1858,  "  were  blown  some  eight  months  each  year, 
and  made  about  30  tons  per  week  of  metal  from  the  bog  ore 
found  in  swales  and  swamps  near  and  generally  to  the  north 
of  a  ridge  of  land  which  was  probably  once  the  shore  of  Lake 
Erie,  found  extending,  with  now  and  then  an  interval,  along 
from  the  west  boundary  of  the  State  of  New  York  to  the 
Huron  river  in  Ohio.  The  want  of  wood  for  charcoal,  conse- 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  303 

quent  upon  the  clearing  up  of  the  land,  has  occasioned  the 
stoppage  of  most  of  these  works.  For  a  long  time  the  set- 
tlers upon  the  shores  of  Lake  Erie  and  in  the  State  of  Mich- 
igan were  supplied  with  their  stoves,  potash  kettles,  and  other 
castings  by  these  works." 

All  of  the  above-mentioned  iron  enterprises  were  on  the 
Western  Reserve.  Just  outside  of  its  limits  Gideon  Hughes 
built  a  furnace  in  1807  or  1808,  on  the  Middle  fork  of  Little 
Beaver  creek,  one  and  a  half  miles  northwest  of  New  Lisbon, 
in  Columbiana  county.  It  was  in  operation  in  1808  and  1809. 
It  was  first  called  Rebecca  of  New  Lisbon,  but  was  afterwards 
named  Dale  furnace.  Attached  to  this  furnace  a  few  years 
after  its  erection  was  a  forge,  which  was  used  for  making  bar 
iron.  John  Frost,  of  New  Lisbon,  to  whom  we  are  indebted 
for  this  information,  also  writes  us  that  "  some  two  or  three 
miles  up  the  same  stream  Mr.  Hughes  and  Joshua  Malin 
erected  a  rolling  mill  in  1822,  to  which  a  company  of  Eng- 
lishmen^ said  to  be  from  Pittsburgh,  not  long  afterwards 
added  aiail-making  machinery.  In  addition  to  manufacturing 
bar  iron  these  works  placed  large  quantities  of  nails  in  the 
market.  This  concern  was  more  or  less  active  till  1832,  when 
the  great  flood  of  waters  early  in  that  year  destroyed  it,  and 
it  was  never  rebuilt."  New  Lisbon  is  located  about  twelve 
miles  from  the  mouth  of  Little  Beaver  creek,  which  empties 
into  the  Ohio  river. 

Soon  after  the  beginning  of  the  iron  industry  on  the  West- 
ern Reserve  the  manufacture  of  iron  was  undertaken  in  some 
of  the  interior  and  southern  counties  of  the  State.  Bishop 
says  that  Moses  Dillon,  who  had  been  associated  with  Isaac 
Meason  and  John  Gibson  in  the  building  of  Union  furnace 
in  Fayette  county,  Pennsylvania,  in  1793,  "  afterwards  erected 
a  forge  on  Licking  river,  near  Zaiiesville,  Ohio,  possibly  the 
first  in  the  State."  This  enterprise  was  preceded  or  immedi- 
ately followed  by  a  furnace  which  is  said  to  have  been  erected 
in  1808,  but  it  may  have  been  built  a  few  years  afterwards. 
It  was  located  "  at  the  Falls  of  Licking,"  four  miles  northwest 
of  Zanesville,  in  Muskingum  county,  and  its  capacity  was 
about  one  ton  per  day.  It  was  used  -to  produce  castings,  as 
well  as  pig  iron  for  the  forge.  Lesley  says  that  this  furnace 
was  not  abandoned  "until  1850  or  later."  The  forge  was 


304  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

also  operated  until  about  1850.     The  furnace  and  forge  were 
known  as  Dillon's,  and  were  widely  celebrated. 

Mary  Ann  furnace,  ten  miles  northeast  of  Newark,  in 
Licking  county,  was  built  about  1816  by  Dr.  Brice  and  Da- 
vid Moore.  It  was  burned  down  "about  1850.  In  Tuscarawas 
county  the  Zoar  Community  owned  two  early  charcoal  fur- 
naces. One  of  these,  called  Tuscarawas,  was  built  about  1830 
by  Christmas,  Hazlett  &  Co.,  and  was  afterwards  sold  to  the 
Community ;  the  other,  called  Zoar,  was  built  about  the  same 
time  by  the  Community.  Both  furnaces  were  finally  blown 
out  before  1850. 

Three  furnaces  were  built  in  Adams  county  between  1811 
and  1816  to  use  the  bog  ores  of  the  Brush  creek  valley. 
The  first  of  these,  Brush  Creek,  located  twelve  miles  from 
the  Ohio  river,  was  built  in  1811  and  operated  in  1813  by 
James  Rodgers.  It  was  probably  built  by  Andrew  Ellison, 
Thomas  James,  and  Archibald  Paull.  It  was  in  operation 
as  late  as  1837,  when  it  produced  200  tons  of  iron,  in  119 
days.  On  the  same  stream,  twenty-two  miles  from  the  Ohio, 
was  Marble  furnace,  built  in  1816.  Another  furnace,  known- 
as  Old  Steam,  was  built  in  1814.  It  is  said  to  have  been 
built  by  James  Rodgers,  Andrew  Ellison,  and  the  Pittsburgh 
Steam  Engine  Company.  Thomas  W.  Means  once  inform- 
ed us  that  "  the  first  blast  furnace  run  by  steam  in  South- 
ern Ohio,  if  not  in  the  United  States,  was  built  by  James 
Rodgers  in  Adams  county  about  1814."  This  reference  is  to 
Old  Steam  furnace.  "  Its  product  was  less  than  two  tons  of 
iron  a  day.  Brush  Creek  furnace,  in  the  same  county,  and 
other  furnaces  of  that  period  which  were  run  by  water  hard- 
ly averaged  one  ton  of  iron  a  day."  Marble  and  Old  Steam 
furnaces  were  abandoned  about  1826.  Lesley  mentions  three 
forges  in  Adams  county  —  Steam,  at  Old  Steam  furnace; 
Scioto,  on  the  Little  Scioto ;  and  Brush  Creek,  probably  con- 
nected with  Brush  Creek  furnace.  The  date  of  the  erection 
of  these  forges  is  not  given,  but  they  were  doubtless  built 
soon  after  the  three  Adams  county  furnaces.  They  were  all 
abandoned  many  years  ago.  There  is  now  no  iron  industry 
in  Adams  county. 

In  the  chapter  relating  to  Kentucky  the  beginning  of  the 
iron  industry  in  the  Hanging  Rock  region  has  been  noted. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  305 

This  celebrated  iron  district  embraces  Greenup,  Boyd,  Cart- 
er, and  Lawrence  counties  in  Kentucky,  andtLawrence,  Jack- 
son, Gallia,  Vinton,  and  Scioto  counties  in  Ohio.  Just  north 
of  the  Ohio  portion  of  this  district  is  the  newly-developed 
Hocking  Valley  iron  district,  embracing  Hocking  county  and 
several  other  counties.  The  Hanging  Rock  district  takes  its 
name  from  a  projecting  cliff  upon  the  north  side  of  the  Ohio 
river,  situated  back  of  the  town  of  Hanging  Rock,  which  is 
in  Lawrence  county,  three  miles  below  Ironton.  The  first 
furnace  in  the  Ohio  part  of  the  Hanging  Rock  district  was 
Union  furnace,  located  a  few  miles  northwest  of  Hanging 
Rock,  built  in  1826  and  1827  by  John  Means,  John  Sparks, 
and  James  Rodgers,  the  firm's  name  being  James  Rodgers  & 
Co.  Franklin  furnace  was  the  second  on  the  Ohio  side.  It 
stood  sixteen  miles  east  of  Portsmouth,  in  Scioto  county,  and 
half  a  mile  from  the  Ohio  river,  and  was  built  in  1827  by 
the  Rev.  Daniel  Young  and  others.  The  next  furnace  was 
Pine  Grove,  on  Sperry's  fork  of  Pine  creek,  back  of  Hanging 
Rock,  in  Lawrence  county,  five  miles  from  the  Ohio  river, 
built  in  1828  by  Robert  Hamilton  and  Andrew  Ellison.  In 
the  same  year  Scioto  furnace,  in  Scioto  county,  fifteen  miles 
north  of  Portsmouth,  was  built  by  William  Salters.  From 
this  time  forward  furnaces  increased  rapidly  on  the  Ohio  side 
of  the  district,  as  well  as  on  the  Kentucky  side.  From  1826 
to  1880  the  whole  number  built  on  the  Ohio  side  was  about 
sixty  and  on  the  Kentucky  side  about  thirty.  All  the  early 
furnaces  were  built  to  use  charcoal,  but  timber  becoming 
scarce  coke  was  substituted  at  some  of  them  while  others 
were  abandoned.  In  late  years  a  few  furnaces  have  been 
built  in  the  district  expressly  to  use  coke  or  raw  coal.  In 
1880  there  were  on  the  Ohio  side  thirty-one  charcoal  furna- 
ces and  seventeen  bituminous  coal  or  coke  furnaces,  but  in 
1890  the  number  of  charcoal  furnaces  had  been  reduced  to 
eleven  and  the  number  of  bituminous  furnaces  to  fifteen. 
At  Vesuvius  furnace,  on  Storm's  creek,  in  Lawrence  coun- 
ty, Ohio,  six  miles  northeast  of  Ironton,  the  hot-blast  was 
successfully  applied  in  1836  by  John  Campbell  and  others, 
William  Firmstone  putting  up  the  apparatus.  It  was  also 
at  once  applied  at  the  La  Grange  and  other  Hanging  Rock 
furnaces. 


306  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

The  Hanging  Rock  district,  on  both  sides  of  the  Ohio,  has 
produced  many  t  eminent  ironmasters,  and  its  iron  resources 
have  been  developed  with  great  energy.  John  Campbell,  of 
Ironton,  and  Thomas  W.  Means,  of  Hanging  Rock,  both  prom- 
inent among  its  early  ironmasters,  have  lived  to  a  good  old 
age.  Mr.  Campbell  was  born  in  1808  in  Brown  county,  Ohio, 
and  was  in  good  health  in  June,  1891.  With  the  aid  of  others 
he  Has  built  eleven  furnaces  in  the  Hanging  Rock  district. 
He  projected  the  town  of  -Ironton  and  gave  it  its  name,  and 
also  assisted  in  the  founding  of  Ashland,  Kentucky,  and  in 
building  its  railroad.  Like  many  of  the  ironmasters  of  this 
district  he  is  of  Scotch-Irish  extraction,  his  ancestors  having 
removed  in  1612  from  Inverary,  in  Argyleshire,  Scotland,  to 
the  neighborhood  of  Londonderry,  in  Ulster,  Ireland.  Their 
descendants  removed  in  1729  and  1739  to  Augusta  county, 
Virginia ;  thence,  in  1790,  to  Bourbon  county,  Kentucky ;  and 
thence,  in  1798,  to  that  part  of  Adams  county,  Ohio,  which 
is  now  embraced  in  Brown  county.  Mr.  Means  was  born  in 
Union  district,  South  Carolina,  in  1803,  and  was  of  English 
ancestry.  He  removed  from  Hanging  Rock  to  Ashland,  Ken- 
tucky, in  1881,  and  died  at  that  place  on  June  8,  1890,  aged 
about  87  years.  Andrew  Ellison,  Robert  Hamilton,  James 
Rodgers,  and  Andrew  Dempsey,  all  of  whom  are  now  dead, 
were  enterprising  and  prominent  iron  manufacturers.  In  De- 
cember, 1844,  Mr.  Hamilton  successfully  tried  the  experiment 
of  stopping  Pine  Grove  furnace,  which  he  then  owned,  on 
Sunday,  and  his  example  has  since  been  generally  follow- 
ed in  the  Hanging  Rock  region.  This  furnace  is  still  active. 
John  Campbell,  Robert  Hamilton,  and  Thomas  W.  Means 
were  united  in  marriage  with  members  of  the  Ellison  fam- 
ily. The  third  generation  of  this  family  is  now  engaged  in 
the  iron  industry  of  Southern  Ohio. 

John  Means,  a  native  of  Exeter,  in  Devonshire,  England, 
removed  to  Pennsylvania  in  1735.  His  son,  William  Means, 
removed  from  Pennsylvania  to  South  Carolina  shortly  be- 
fore the  Revolution,  where  he  married  Anna  Newton,  a  rela- 
tive of  Sir  Isaac  Newton.  Their  son,  John  Means,  removed 
to  Adams  county,  Ohio,  in  1819,  taking  with  him  his  slaves, 
whom  he  liberated.  He  died  on  his  farm  near  Manchester, 
in  Adams  county,  on  March  15,  1837,  and  was  buried  in  the 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  307 

churchyard  at  Manchester.  He  was  part  owner  of  a  furnace 
and  a  forge  in  Adams  county  in  the  early  days.  He  was 
the  father  of  Thomas  W.  Means. 

In  the  first  number  of  the  Journal  of  the  United  States  As- 
sociation of  Charcoal  Iron  Workers  for  1891  Mr.  John  Birkin- 
bine,  the  editor,  describes  Olive  furnace,  in  Lawrence  county, 
Ohio,  in  the  Hanging  Rock  region,  which,  he  says,  "is  the 
only  active  blast  furnace  in  the  United  States  the  sta€k  of 
which  is  largely  hewn  from  the  solid  rock."  It  will  be  re- 
membered that  in  our  Kentucky  chapter  we  mentioned  Ar- 
gillite  furnace  in  that  State  as  having  been  similarly  con- 
structed, but  that  furnace  was  long  ago  abandoned.  It  will 
also  be  remembered  that  in  one  of  our  earlier  chapters  we 
described  two  furnaces  in  Scotland,  known  as  the  Devon  iron 
works,  which  were  cut  out  of  the  solid  rock.  Mr.  Birkin- 
bine's  description  of  Olive  furnace  is  as  follows. 

The  Olive  furnace  was  constructed  and  first  operated  in  the  year  1846, 
and  with  the  exception  of  one  year  it  has  been  in  blast  every  year  since 
its  completion.  Originally  the  furnace  was  run  with  cold-blast,  the  pig 
iron  being  consumed  principally  by  charcoal  forges  along  the  Ohio  river 
for  the  production  of  blooms,  to  be  used  in  the  manufacture  of  boiler 
plates.  After  being  operated  in  this  way  for  ten  years,  during  which 
time  the  output  averaged  about  six  to  eight  tons  per  day,  a  hot-blast  of 
the  ring  pattern  was  added.  Throughout  the  various  changes  the  origi- 
nal stack,  built  in  1846,  was  retained,  and  beyond  an  addition  of  4  feet 
to  the  top  masonry,  making  the  total  height  40  feet,  and  widening  one 
tuyere  arch,  the  main  structure  is  as  it  was  first  built. 

The  peculiarity  of  construction  consists  in  the  lower  half  of  the  blast- 
furnace stack  being  hewn  from  a  ledge  of  solid  rock,  which  is  exposed 
for  a  height  of  over  20  feet.  This  rock  ledge  is  a  sandstone,  which  cuts 
easily  when  first  hewn  but  hardens  upon  exposure.  A  suitable  site  hav- 
ing been  selected  the  earth  in  front  of  the  rock  was  removed,  and  the 
entire  rock  face  thus  exposed  was  dressed  for  a  length  of  60  feet,  and 
from  this  space  the  blast-furnace  stack  was  cut,  the  additional  height  of 
stack,  20  feet,  being  obtained  by  masonry  built  upon  the  rock. 

In  general  appearance  and  outline  the  lower  portion  of  the  stack  of 
the  Olive  furnace  does  not,  except  in  a  total  absence  of  bracing,  differ 
materially  from  the  older  stacks  which  were  built  of  stone  masonry ;  the 
stack  is  square  in  plan,  with  sloping  sides,  the  bottom  being  48  feet -square 
and  the  top  (20  feet  above  the  bottom)  36  feet  square.  It  stands  at  the 
sides  and  rear  from  4  to  6  feet  and  at  the  top  still  further  away  from  the 
mass  of  rock  of  which  it  originally  formed  a  part.  It  is  cored  out  to  ac- 
commodate the  lining  of  the  furnace,  and  the  sides  are  pierced  for  one 
fore  arch  and  two  tuyere  arches,  all  cut  in  the  solid  rock. 

Originally  the  inwall  was  laid  with  sandstone,  and  the  hearth  and 


308  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

bosh  were  constructed  of  the  same  material.  In  later  years,  however,  fire- 
brick has  been  used  for  the  in  wall  and  lining;  but  hearth  and  bottoms 
are  still  cut  from  the  sandstone,  which  occurs  in  great  quantity  and  of 
excellent  quality  convenient  to  the  Olive  furnace. 

The  frequent  changes  of  temperature  have  caused  the  mass  of  rock 
forming  the  lower  portion  of  the  stack  to  develop  a  number  of  cracks. 
At  first  these  were  small,  but  at  each  blast  they  have  opened  until  they 
exhibit  in  a  remarkable  manner  the  marvelous  power  of  expansion.  This 
portiqn  of  the  stack  being  without  bands  or  buck-staves  has  an  appear- 
ance of  weakness,  which,  however,  on  closer  examination,  is  removed,  and 
it  is  probable  that  the  old  hewn  stack  is  good  for  years  of  service. 

The  good  quality  of  Hanging  Rock  charcoal  pig  iron 
and  the  conditions  surrounding  its  production  during  the 
last  sixty  years  are  told  with  a  pleasing  touch  of  sentiment 
in  the  following  anonymous  newspaper  paragraph,  which 
appeared  in  the  latter  part  of  1890. 

The  old  charcoal  furnace  of  the  Hecla  Iron  and  Mining  Company,  at 
Ironton,  Ohio,  which  was  succeeded  by  a  new  stack  during  the  past  sum- 
mer, is  one  of  the  most  celebrated  in  the  Hanging  Rock  region,  and  will 
for  a  long  time  remain  as  a  landmark  in  that  locality.  The  furnace  was 
built  in  1833  and  abandoned  on  April  15, 1890,  and  was  a  stone  stack,  36  by 
10£  feet,  cold-blast,  open  top.  The  ores  used  were  siderite  and  limonite,  and 
for  years  the  product  held  an  enviable  place  in  the  estimation  of  consum- 
ers. The  iron  produced  has  commanded  such  customers  as  the  United 
States  Government  during  the  civil  war  (one  or  two  blasts  being  about  all 
engaged)  for  ordnance,  etc.,  cast  at  Pittsburgh.  Its  metal  went  into  the  guns 
mounted  in  the  Swamp  Angel  battery  which  besieged  the  city  of  Charles- 
ton. The  metal  was  also  used  in  the  armor  plates  of  the  gunboats  which 
stormed  Forts  Donelson  and  Henry.  For  many  years  the  Pennsylvania 
Railroad  Company  has  taken  about  all  the  furnace  would  make  of  certain 
grades,  for  use  in  the  best  class  of  car  wheels.  Other  customers  used  the 
metal  for  a  fine  quality  of  chilled  rolls,  etc.,  and  the  strongest  parts  of 
machinery.  The  iron  was  produced  in  the  simplest  manner,  many  of  the 
employes  having  lived  at  the  furnace  all  their  lives,  some  45,  55,  and  one 
65  years.  The  charcoal  used  was  from  the  company's  lands,  made  in  old 
style  and  hauled  by  ox  teams,  producing  iron  at  large  cost  and  selling  at 
large  prices,  $80  and  $90  during  the  war,  $65  during  the  booms  of  1873 
and  1880,  but  since  then  at  a  minimum  price,  necessitating  the  abandon- 
ment for  more  modern  and  cheaper  methods,  though  the  old  stack  will 
be  preserved.  Scarred,  rugged,  moss-grown,  picturesque,  and  unique,  it  will 
serve  as  a  reminder  of  pioneer  days,  of  war's  fierce  alarms,  and  that  sen- 
timent still  lives  amidst  this  latter-day  strife  in  ironmaking. 

In  1833  a  forge  was  built  at  Hanging  Rock,  after  which 
it  was  named,  to  manufacture  blooms.  It  was  owned  by 
J.  Riggs  &  Co.,  and  was  built  under  the  superintendence  of 
John  Campbell  and  Joseph  Riggs.  A  rolling  mill  was  added 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  309 

before  1847.  Both  the  forge  and  rolling  mill  have  long  been 
abandoned.  A  forge  was  built  at  Sample's  Landing,  fifteen 
miles  below  Gallipolis,  soon  after  1830,  to  make  blooms  for 
the  Covington  rolling  mill.  Bloom  forge  was  built  at  Ports- 
mouth, in  Scioto  county,  in  1832,  and  in  1857  a  rolling  mill 
was  added.  A  forge  called  Benner's,  on  Paint  creek,  near 
Chillicothe,  in  Ross  county,  once  owned  by  James  &  Wood- 
ruff, was  abandoned  about  1850.  There  never  were  many 
forges  in  Ohio  for  refining  iron,  and  there  have  been  few, 
if  any,  for  making  bar  iron  directly  from  the  ore.  The  first 
iron  enterprises  in  the  State  preceded  by  only  a  few  years 
the  building  of  rolling  mills  at  Pittsburgh. 

The  first  rolling  mill  at  Cincinnati  was  the  Cincinnati 
rolling  mill,  built  about  1830  by  Shreeve,  Paull  &  McCand- 
less.  The  Globe  rolling  mill  was  built  at  Cincinnati  in  1845. 
Joseph  Kinsey  writes  us  that  "  it  was  the  first  built  in  Cin- 
cinnati for  the  purpose  of  making  general  sizes  of  merchant 
iron,  hoops,  sheets,  and  plates.  It  was  built  by  William  Sell- 
ers and  Josiah  Lawrence,  and  was  considered  a  great  enter- 
prise at  that  time.  Soon  afterwards  a  wire  mill  was  added 
for  the  purpose  of  making  the  first  wire  used  for  the  lines  of 
telegraph  extending  through  this  country."  There  are  now  in 
Cincinnati  and  in  its  vicinity  on  the  Ohio  side  of  the  Ohio 
river  two  rolling  mills  but  no  blast  furnaces  or  steel  works. 

Ohio  is  entitled  to  the  honor  of  having  had  established 
within  its  boundaries  the  first  successful  works  in  the  United 
States  for  the  manufacture  of  crucible  steel  of  the  best  quality. 
The  proof  of  this  claim  is  ample,  and  it  will  be  presented  in 
a  subsequent  chapter  when  we  come  to  speak  of  this  branch 
of  our  steel  industry.  The  works  alluded  to  were  located  on 
the  bank  of  the  Miami  Canal,  in  Cincinnati,  and  were  built 
in  1832  by  two  brothers,  Dr.  William  Garrard  and  John  H. 
Garrard,  who  were  natives  of  England  but  residents  of  the 
United  States  after  1822.  After  the  works  were  built  Will- 
iam T.  Middleton  and  Charles  Fox  were  successively  partners 
with  Dr.  Garrard,  his  brother  having  retired.  Dr.  Garrard 
was  the  inspiration  of  the  enterprise  and  its  master  spirit 
during  the  whole  period  of  its  existence.  The  firm  failed  in 
1837,  but  the  business  was  continued  for  some  time  afterwards. 
During  the  first  five  years  the  best  crucible  steel  was  made 


310  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

at  these  works  by  Dr.  Garrard,  entirely  with  American  mate- 
rials. It  was  used  for  saws,  springs,  axes,  reaper  knives,  files, 
and  tools  generally. 

The  foregoing  details  relate  to  what  may  be  termed  the 
charcoal  era  of  the  Ohio  iron  industry.  The  second  stage 
in  the  development  of  the  iron  industry  of  this  State  dates 
from  the  introduction  in  its  blast  furnaces  of  the  bituminous 
coal  of  the  Mahoning  valley  in  its  raw  state.  This  coal  is 
known  as  splint  coal,  or  block  coal,  or  as  Brier  Hill  coal,  from 
a  locality  of  that  name  near  Youngstown,  where  it  is  largely 
mined.  The  first  furnace  in  Ohio  to  use  the  new  fuel  was 
built  expressly  for  this  purpose  at  Lowell,  in  Mahoning  coun- 
ty, in  1845  and  1846,  by  Wilkeson,  Wilkes  &  Co.,  and  it  was 
successfully  blown  in  on  the  8th  of  August,  1846.  The  name 
of  this  furnace  was  at  first  Anna  and  afterwards  Mahoning. 
A  letter  from  John  Wilkeson,  of  Buffalo,  New  York,  inform- 
ed us  a  few  years  ago  that  William  McNair,  a  millwright,  was 
the  foreman  who  had  charge  of  its  erection.  It  was  blown 
in  by  John  Crowther,  who  had  previously  had  charge  of  the 
furnaces  of  the  Brady's  Bend  Iron  Company,  at  Brady's  Bend, 
Pennsylvania.  Mr.  Wilkeson  and  his  brothers  were  for  many 
years  prominent  charcoal-iron  manufacturers  on  the  Western 
Eeserve.  They  were  of  Scotch-Irish  extraction.  Their  father 
was  a  native  of  Carlisle,  Pennsylvania. 

Immediately  after  the  successful  use  of  uncoked  coal  in 
the  furnace  at  Lowell  many  other  furnaces  were  built  in  the 
Mahoning  valley  to  use  the  new  fuel,  and  it  was  also  substi- 
tuted for  charcoal  in  some  old  furnaces.  At  a  later  day  the 
use  of  this  fuel  in  other  parts  of  Ohio  contributed  to  the  fur- 
ther development  of  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron  in  this  State, 
and  at  a  still  later  and  very  recent  date  the  opening  of  the 
extensive  coal  beds  of  the  Hocking  valley  and  the  utilization 
of  its  carbonate  ores  still  further  contributed  to  the  same 
development,  the  Hocking  valley  coal  being  used  in  its  raw 
state.  At  the  present  time,  however,  Connellsville  coke  has 
almost  entirely  superseded  the  use  of  raw  coal  in  the  Mahon- 
ing valley,  and  in  the  Hocking  valley  coke  is  now  largely 
mixed  with  raw  coal. 

The  proximity  of  the  coal  fields  of  Ohio  to  the  rich  iron 
ores  of  Lake  Superior  has  been,  however,  the  most  impor- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  311 

tant  element  in  building  up  the  blast-furnace  industry  of  the 
State.  The  use  of  these  ores  in  Ohio  soon  followed  the  first 
use  in  the  blast  furnace  of  the  block  coal  of  the  Mahoning 
valley.  An  increase  in  the  rolling-mill  capacity  of  Ohio  was 
naturally  coincident  with  the  impetus  given  to  the  produc- 
tion of  pig  iron  by  the  use  of  this  coal  and  Lake  Superior 
ores.  David  Tod,  afterwards  Governor  of  Ohio,  bore  a  prom- 
inent part  in  the  development  of  the  coal  and  iron  resources 
of  the  Mahoning  valley.  In  a  sketch  of  Youngstown,  Past  and 
Present,  (1875,)  we  find  the  following  notice  of  Mr.  Tod's  en- 
terprise in  developing  the  coal  trade  of  the  Mahoning  valley. 

In  1840  David  Tod  was  operating  a  mine  at  Brier  Hill,  and  upon  the 
completion  of  the  Pennsylvania  and  Ohio  Canal  from  Akron,  Ohio,  to  Bea- 
ver, Pennsylvania,  he  shipped  a  couple  of  boat  loads  to  Cleveland  for  the 
purpose  of  introducing  it  as  fuel  on  lake  steamers,  which  was  not  easily 
accomplished,  there  being  considerable  hostility  manifested  towards  it  by 
engineers  and  firemen.  Mr.  Tod,  however,  was  not  to  be  discouraged  by 
these  difficulties,  and  finally  succeeded  in  making  a  successful  experiment, 
and  in  1845  coal  supplanted  wood  on  the  steamers  on  the  lower  lakes. 
Large  quantities  were  subsequently  mined  and  shipped  to  Cleveland  from 
the  Mahoning  valley  by  Mr.' Tod,  and  but  a  few  years  elapsed  until  the 
mining  and  shipping  of  coal  became  a  prominent  industry;  later  the 
opening  of  the  Cleveland  and  Mahoning  Railway  from  Cleveland  to 
Youngstown,  traversing  the  heart  of  the  coal  region,  gave  fresh  impetus 
to  the  mining  interests. 

The  beginning  of  the  iron  industry  at  Youngstown,  which 
now  has  within  its  own  limits  or  in  the  immediate  vicinity 
fifteen  furnaces  and  eleven  rolling  mills,  dates  from  about 
1835,  when  a  charcoal  furnace,  called  Mill  Creek,  was  built 
on  a  creek  of  the  same  name,  a  short  distance  southwest  of 
the  city,  by  Isaac  Heaton,  a  son  of  James  Heaton.  There  was 
no  other  furnace  at  Youngstown  until  after  the  discovery  at 
Lowell  that  the  block  coal  of  the  Mahoning  valley  could  be 
successfully  used  in  the  smelting  of  iron  ore.  In  a  sketch 
of  the  history  of  Youngstown  Hon.  John  M.  Edwards  says : 
"  In  1846  William  Philpot  &  Co.  built  in  the  northwestern 
part  of  Youngstown,  adjoining  the  present  city,  and  near  the 
canal,  the  second  furnace  in  the  State  for  using  raw  mineral 
coal  as  fuel.  In  the  same  year  a  rolling  mill  was  built  in  the 
southeastern  part  of  the  village,  and  adjoining  the  canal,  by 
the  Youngstown  Iron  Company.  This  mill  is  now  owned  by 
Brown,  Bonnell  &  Co." 


312  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

In  Youngstown,  Past  and  Present,  a  more  detailed  account 
is  given  of  its  first  bituminous  furnace.  It  was  known  as 
the  Eagle  furnace,  and  was  "  built  in  1846  by  William  Phil- 
pot,  David  Morris,  Jonathan  Warner,  and  Harvey  Sawyer, 
on  land  purchased  of  Dr.  Henry  Manning,  lying  between  the 
present  city  limits  and  Brier  Hill.  The  coal  used  was  mined 
from  land  contiguous,  leased  from  Dr.  Manning."  The  sec- 
ond furnace  at  Youngstown  to  use  raw  coal  was  built  in  1847 
by  Captain  James  Wood,  of  Pittsburgh.  It  was  called  Brier 
Hill  furnace.  There  was  a  steam  forge  at  Youngstown,  called 
the  Fairmount  iron  works,  whose  history  antedates  that  of 
all  the  rolling  mills  of  that  place.  We  are  indebted  to  Mr. 
J.  G.  Butler,  Jr.,  of  Youngstown,  for  the  following  circum- 
stantial account  of  this  almost  forgotten  enterprise. 

The  firm  of  Spencer  &  Co.  operated  a  small  steam  forge  about  1840 
on  or  near  the  present  site  of  Smith's  brewery,  on  West  Federal  street, 
Youngstown.  They  used  a  small  upright  boiler,  with  a  brick  chimney. 
The  forge,  after  being  operated  for  a  time,  failed  to  be  profitable  and  was 
sold  under  execution  to  Mr.  Asahel .  Tyrrell,  of  Tyrrell  Hill,  Trumbull 
county,  Ohio,  now  a  station  on  the  Lake  Shore  and  Michigan  Southern 
Railway.  The  forge  was  removed  to  Tyrrell  Hill  in  the  summer  season, 
leaving  the  chimney  standing.  The  succeeding  winter,  after  snow  had 
fallen,  Mr.  Tyrrell  came  to  haul  away  the  brick  used  in  the  construction 
of  the  chimney.  To  this  Jonathan  Edwards,  (a  lineal  descendant  of  his 
great  namesake,)  who  owned  and  leased  the  ground  which  Spencer  &  Co. 
occupied,  objected,  claiming  that  the  chimney  was  fixed  property,  or  a 
part  of  the  realty.  A  law-suit  grew  out  of  the  difference  in  opinion,  and 
.two  young  lawyers  were  pitted  against  each  other,  both  of  these  lawyers 
subsequently  becoming  famous ;  one,  the  Hon.  John  Crowell,  and  the  other, 
Judge  Rufus  P.  Ranney.  Mr.  Tyrrell  won  his  suit  and  the  chimney  was 
taken  away.  I  get  this  information  from  old  settlers  and  you  may  con- 
sider it  reliable. 

The  iron  industry  of  Cleveland  has  been  built  up  during 
recent  years,  and  this  city  is  now  one  of  the  most  prominent 
centres  of  iron  and  steel  production  in  the  country.  Charles 
A.  Otis,  of  Cleveland,  writes  us  as  follows  concerning  the  first 
rolling  mills  in  that  city :  "  The  first  rolling  mill  at  Cleve- 
land was  a  plate  mill,  worked  on  a  direct-ore  process,  which 
was  a  great  failure.  It  went  into  operation  in  1854  or  1855. 
The  mill  is  now  owned  by  the  Britton  Iron  and  Steel  Com- 
pany. The  next  mill  was  built  in  1857  by  A.  J.  Smith  and 
others  to  re-roll  rails.  It  was  called  Railroad  rolling  mill, 
and  is  now  owned  by  the  Cleveland  Rolling  Mill  Company. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  313 

At  the  same  time  a  man  named  Jones,  with  several  associ- 
ates, built  a  mill  at  Newburgh,  six  miles  from  Cleveland, 
also  to  re-roll  rails.  It  was  afterwards  operated  by  Stone, 
Chisholm  &  Jones,  and  is  now  owned  by  the  Cleveland  Roll- 
ing Mill  Company.  In  1852  I  erected  a  steam  forge  to  make 
wrought-iron  forgings,  and  in  1859  I  added  to  it  a  rolling 
mill  to  manufacture  merchant  bar,  etc.  The  Union  rolling 
mills  were  built  in  1861  and  1862  to  roll  merchant  bar  iron." 
The  first  furnace  at  Cleveland  was  the  first  of  the  Newburgh 
furnaces,  built  in  1864.  The  Bessemer  steel  plant  of  the  Cleve- 
land Rolling  Mill  Company  was  commenced  in  1867.  The 
open-hearth  works  of  the  Otis  Steel  Company  Limited  were 
built  in  1873  and  1874.  There  are  now  in  Cleveland  nine 
rolling  mills  and  steel  works  and  five  blast  furnaces,  as  well 
as  several  iron  and  steel  establishments  of  a  reproductive 
character. 

In  the  list  of  persons  connected  with  the  development  of 
the  iron  and  steel  industries  of  Cleveland  the  name  of  Henry 
Chisholm  is  the  most  prominent.  Mr.  Chisli9lm  was  born  at 
Lochgelly,  in  Fifeshire,  Scotland,  on  April  27, 1822,  and  died 
at  Cleveland  on  May  9,  1881,  aged  59  years. 

From  1846  to  1890  the  iron  industry  of  Ohio  has  made 
steady  progress,  and  the  State  now  ranks  second  among  the 
iron-producing  States  of  the  Union.  This  was  also  its  rank 
in  1870  and  in  1880.  In  the  production  of  steel  it  was  third 
in  the  list  in  1880,  and  this  rank  it  has  since  maintained, 
Pennsylvania  being  first  and  Illinois  second. 


314  THE    MANUFACTURE    OP 

CHAPTER  XXXII. 
EARLY   IRON  ENTERPRISES  IN  INDIANA. 

INDIANA  possessed  a  small  charcoal-iron  industry  before 
1840,  but  at  what  period  in  the  present  century  this  indus- 
try had  its  beginning  can  not  now  be  definitely  determined. 
Tench  Coxe  makes  no  reference  to  it  in  1810,  but  mentions 
one  nailery  in  the  Territory,  which  produced  in  that  year 
20,000  pounds  of  nails,  valued  at  $4,000.  He  does  not  locate 
this  enterprise.  In  1840  the  census  mentions  a  furnace  in 
Jefferson  county,  one  in  Parke,  one  in  Vigo,  one  in  Vermill- 
ion,  and  three  in  Wayne  county,  the  total  product  being  810 
tons  of  "  cast  iron."  A  forge  in  Fulton  county,  producing  20 
tons  of  "  bar  iron,"  is  also  mentioned.  The  furnaces  of  1840 
were  probably  all  used  as  foundries,  producing  hollow-ware 
and  other  castings  from  bog  ores. 

In  a  chapter  on  the  geology  of  Monroe  county,  by  George 
K.  Greene,  printed  in  1881,  it  is  stated  that  "nearly  forty 
years  ago  an  iron  furnace  was  erected  by  Randall  Ross,  of 
Virginia,  on  the  lands  of  George  Adams,  of  Monroe  county, 
on  section  7,  township  7,  range  2  west.  The  investment  soon 
proved  a  failure,  and  the  furnace  has  long  gone  to  decay. 
The  ruins  of  the  'old  iron  furnace'  are  to-day  the  mourn- 
ful monument  of  an  early  spirit  of  enterprise  that  deserved 
a  better  fate." 

The  Fulton-county  forge  was  only  a  bloomary.  It  was 
located  at  Rochester,  and  was  built  about  1840.  It  used  bog 
ore,  which  was  converted  into  bar  iron.  Dr.  Ryland  T. 
Brown,  of  Indianapolis,  told  us  in  his  lifetime  that  it  had 
a  hearth  about  four  feet  square,  with  a  stack  about  ten  feet 
high,  much  like  the  stack  of  an  ordinary  foundry.  There 
was  an  opening  on  one  side  large  enough  to  admit  of  the 
process  of  puddling,  from  which  the  bloom  of  iron  was  tak- 
en and  placed  under  the  trip-hammer.  The  blast  was  sup- 
plied by  a  pair  of  bellows  like  the  ordinary  bellows  of  the 
blacksmith,  but  larger.  The  bellows  and  the  hammer  were 
driven  by  water-power.  It  was  Dr.  Brown's  opinion  that 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  315 

the  Fulton-county  forge  possessed  all  the  characteristics  of 
a  stiickofen,  but  Mr.  D.  S.  Ross,  who  was  still  living  at 
Rochester  in  1891,  informs  us  that  the  forge  was  "an  open- 
hearth  charcoal  fire."  He  also  informs  us  that  the  water- 
power  at  Rochester  being  insufficient  the  forge  was  removed 
"after  a  couple  of  years"  to  the  Tippecanoe  river,  "at  the 
point  where  the  railroad  crosses  the  river,  two  and  a  half 
miles  north  of  Rochester."  It  was  abandoned  in  1858.  The 
last  iron  made  by  it  was  bought  by  a  Pittsburgh  firm  to  be 
converted  into  carpet  tacks. 

There  was  another  early  forge  "  in  the  Twin  lakes 
country,  in  Marshall  county,"  about  1845.  It  was  built  by 
Charles  Crocker,  afterwards  the  California  millionaire,  and  a 
partner.  The  forge  was  located  at  Sligo.  Mr.  Crock er,  had 
previously  worked  at  a  forge  at  Mishawaka,  in  St.  Joseph 
county,  which  was  owned  by  a  Mr.  Wilson.  The  bar  iron 
made  at  these  forges  was  largely  used  for  wagon  tires.  Bog 
ore  was  used,  as  at  Rochester.  There  were  probably  a  few 
other  bog-ore  bloomaries  in  Indiana  at  an  early  day  like 
those  at  Rochester,  Sligo,  and  Mishawaka. 

In  1859  Lesley  enumerated  five  charcoal  furnaces  in  In- 
diana, as  follows :  Elkhart,  in  Elkhart  county,  date  of  erec- 
tion unknown ;  Mishawaka,  in  St.  Joseph  county,  built  about 
1833;  Indiana,  a  few  miles  northwest  of  Terre  Haute,  in 
Vigo  county,  built  in  1839 ;  Richland,  on  Richland  creek, 
in  Greene  county,  built  in  1844  by  A.  Downing;  and  La 
Porte,  near  the  town  of  that  name,  in  La  Porte  county,  built 
in  1848.  Mishawaka,  Indiana,  and  Richland  were  in  opera- 
tion in  1857,  but  were  abandoned  about  1860.  Elkhart  and 
La  Porte  furnaces  were  idle  in  1857,  and  probably  had  been 
abandoned  at  that  time.  Elkhart,  La  Porte,  and  Mishawaka 
used  bog  ore  exclusively,  and  Richland  used  it  in  part ;  in 
1857  Mishawaka  was  still  using  it.  Indiana  used  brown 
hematite  found  in  the  neighborhood. 

In  1860  there  was  only  one  furnace  in  blast  in  Indiana — 
Richland.  It  was  probably  abandoned  in  that  year,  and  from 
this  time  until  1867  no  pig  iron  was  made  in  Indiana.  In 
the  latter  year  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron  in  this  State  was 
revived,  the  development  of  the  block-coal  district  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Brazil,  in  Clay  county,  having  led  to  the 


316  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

belief  that  this  fuel  might  be  profitably  used  in  blast  fur- 
naces. Planet  furnace,  at  Harmony,  in  Clay  county,  built  in 
the  summer  of  1867  and  put  in  blast  in  November  of  that 
year,  was  the  first  of  eight  furnaces  that  were  built  in  Indi- 
ana between  1867  and  1872  to  use  this  coal,  the  ores  for  the 
furnaces  being  mainly  obtained  from  Missouri  and  the  Lake 
Superior  district  of  Michigan.  Five  of  these  furnaces  were 
in  Clay  county.  Of  the  eight  furnaces  built  six  have  been 
abandoned  and  torn  down  since  1872,  and  only  two  now 
remain — Brazil  and  Vigo.  No  furnaces  have  been  built  in 
Indiana  since  1872. 

The  first  rolling  mill  in  Indiana  was  probably  the  Indi- 
anapolis mill,  built  by  R.  A.  Douglas,  which  was  completed 
in  the  autumn  of  1857  and  put  in  operation  in  November 
of  the  same  year.  In  1858  Lesley  says  :  "  The  machinery 
and  building  were  planned  by  Lewis  Scofield,  of  Trenton, 
New  Jersey,  who  also  built  the  Wyandotte  mill  and  is  build- 
ing the  mill  at  Atlanta,  Georgia."  There  were  in  1883  eight 
rolling  mills  in  Indiana — two  at  New  Albany,  two  at  Terre 
Haute,  and  one  each  at  Indianapolis,  Greencastle,  Aurora, 
and  Brazil.  The  State  contained  no  works  in  that  year  for 
the  manufacture  of  steel.  Early  in  1891  there  were  thirteen 
completed  rolling  mills  in  Indiana.  Connected  with  some  of 
these  rolling  mills  were  a  few  small  steel  plants.  The  dis- 
covery a  few  years  ago  of  natural  gas  in  Indiana  gave  a 
fresh  start  to  its  rolling-mill  industry  and  partly  created  its 
steel  industry.  At  the  works  of  the  Premier  Steel  Company 
in  Indianapolis  the  Adams  direct  process  was  introduced 
about  the  beginning  of  1890. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  317 

CHAPTER  XXXIII. 
EARLY   IRON  ENTERPRISES   IN   ILLINOIS. 

IN  1839  a  small  charcoal  furnace  was  built  four  miles 
northwest  of  Elizabeth  town,  in  Hardin  county,  in  the  ex- 
treme southeastern  part  of  Illinois,  by  Leonard  White,  Galen 
Guard,  &  Co.  It  was  called  Illinois.  This  is  the  first  furnace 
in  the  State  of  which  there  is  any  record,  and  it  probably 
had  no  predecessor.  In  1853  it  was  purchased  by  C.  Wolfe  & 
Co.,  of  Cincinnati,  who  tore  down  the  stack  and  built  a  larger 
one  in  1856,  with  modern  additions.  In  1873  this  furnace, 
after  having  been  out  of  blast  for  several  years,  was  repaired, 
but  it  was  never  again  active.  A  charcoal  furnace  called 
Martha,  also  in  Hardin  county,  was  built  in  1848  by  Daniel 
McCook  &  Co.  about  two  miles  east  of  Illinois  furnace.  It 
was  probably  the  second  furnace  in  the  State.  Illinois  and 
Martha  furnaces  were  both  in  blast  in  1850,  but  in  1860  Illi- 
nois only  was  in  blast.  Martha  had  not  been  in.  operation 
since  1856,  and  it  probably  never  made  any  iron  after  that 
year.  It  has  long  been  abandoned.  These  furnaces  were  sup- 
plied with  hematite  ore  from  the  immediate  neighborhood. 

In  the  census  of  1840  mention  is  made  of  a  furnace  in 
Cook  county,  one  in  Fulton,  one  in  Hardin,  and  one  in  Wa- 
bash  county.  The  furnaces  in  Fulton  and  Hardin  counties 
were  idle,  the  furnace  in  Wabash  county  produced  eight  tons 
of  "  cast  iron,"  and  the  furnace  in  Cook  county  produced  150 
tons.  As  the  census  of  1840  sometimes  confounds  blast  fur- 
naces with  foundries  full  reliance  can  not  be  placed  on  the 
correctness  of  its  statements  concerning  furnaces  in  Illinois. 
We  have  definitely  ascertained  that  there  was  no  furnace  in 
Cook  county  in  that  year,  and  that  the  furnace  with  which 
it  is  credited  in  the  census  was  Granger's  foundry,  the  only 
one  in  Chicago  at  that  time. 

There  appears  to  have  been  no  furnace  in  operation  in 
Illinois  from  1860  to  1868.  Soon  after  the  close  of  the  civil 
war  the  attention  of  iron  manufacturers  was  attracted  to  the 
Big  Muddy  coal  fields,  in  the  southwestern  part  of  Illinois, 


318  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

and  to  the  proximity  to  these  coal  fields  of  the  rich  iron  ores 
of  Missouri.  In  1868  the  Grand  Tower  Mining,  Manufactur- 
ing, and  Transportation  Company  built  two  large  furnaces  at 
Grand  Tower,  in  Jackson  county,  Illinois,  to  use  the  Big  Mud- 
dy coal  in  connection  with  Missouri  ores  ;  and  in  1871  another 
large  furnace,  called  Big  Muddy,  was  built  at  Grand  Tower 
by  another  company  to  use  the  same  fuel  and  ores.  The  two 
Grand  Tower  furnaces  have  been  out  of  blast  for  several  years 
and  are  now  abandoned,  but  the  Big  Muddy  furnace  was  in 
blast  in  1881,  since  which  year  it  has  been  idle.  At  East  St. 
Louis  the  Meier  Iron  Company  built  two  large  coke  furnaces 
between  1873  and  1875.  These  furnaces  were  in  operation 
in  1882,  their  fuel  being  mainly  Carbondale  coke,  from  Jack- 
son county,  Illinois,  but  they  were  never  afterwards  in  blast. 
In  1890  they  were  removed  to  Big  Stone  Gap,  Virginia. 

The  iron  industry  at  Chicago  and  its  vicinity  properly 
dates  from  1857,  when  Captain  E.  B.  Ward,  of  Detroit,  built 
the  Chicago  rolling  mill,  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Chicago 
river,  "  just  outside  of  the  city."  This  mill  was  built  to  re- 
roll  iron  rails.  It  formed  the  nucleus  of  the  extensive  works 
afterwards  built  by  the  North  Chicago  Rolling  Mill  Com- 
pany. There  was  no  furnace  at  Chicago  until  1868,  when  two 
furnaces  were  built  by  the  Chicago  Iron  Company.  They 
were  afterwards  owned  by  the  Union  Steel  Company.  One 
furnace  was  blown  in  early  in  1869  and  the  other  late  in 
the  same  year.  Two  furnaces  were  built  at  Chicago  in  1869 
by  the  North  Chicago  Rolling  Mill  Company.  No  other  fur- 
naces were  built  at  Chicago  until  1880,  when  seven  new  fur- 
naces were  undertaken,  three  of  which  were  finished  in  that 
year,  two  in  1881,  and  two  in  1882.  At  Joliet,  thirty-seven 
miles  southwest  of  Chicago,  the  Joliet  Iron  and  Steel  Com- 
pany built  two  furnaces  in  1873.  They  are  now  owned  by 
the  Illinois  Steel  Company. 

In  1883  there  were  seventeen  rolling  mills  and  steel  works 
in  Illinois,  four  of  which  were  Bessemer  steel  works — three  at 
Chicago  and  one  at  Joliet ;  two  were  open-hearth  steel  works 
— one  at  Springfield  and  one  at  Chicago ;  and  one  was  a  cru- 
cible st§el  works  at  Chicago.  At  the  beginning  of  1884  there 
were  seventeen  blast  furnaces  in  the  State,  including  the  pio- 
neer furnace,  Illinois,  which  has  since  been  abandoned. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  319 

In  1890  there  were  fifteen  completed  furnaces  in  Illinois 
and  five  more  were  in  course  of  erection.  In  the  same  year 
there  were  seven  standard  Bessemer  steel  works  in  the  State, 
four  of  which  were  owned  by  the  Illinois  Steel  Company, 
which  had  absorbed  in  1889  the  business  of  the  North  Chi- 
cago Rolling  Mill  Company,  the  Union  Steel  Company,  and 
the  Joliet  Steel  Company.  There  was  also  a  Robert-Bessemer 
steel  plant  in  Illinois  in  that  year.  There  were  four  open- 
hearth  steel  plants  and  one  crucible  steel  plant.  The  whole 
number  of  rolling  mills  in  Illinois  was  twenty-one,  and  two 
others  were  projected. 

In  the  aggregate  production  of  iron  and  steel  in  1880 
Illinois  ranked  fourth  among  the  iron  and  steel  producing 
States  of  the  Union,  making  a  great  stride  since  1870,  when 
it  was  fifteenth  in  rank.  The  State  has  long  been  second  in 
the  production  of  Bessemer  steel,  and  for  a  number  of  years 
it  was  third  in  the  production  of  pig  iron,  but  in  1889  it  fell 
below  Alabama  as  a  producer  of  pig  iron,  Alabama  taking 
the  third  place.  This  State  draws  its  supply  of  iron  ore 
from  the  Lake  Superior  region  and  its  supply  of  coke  al- 
most wholly  from  the  Connellsville  district  in  Pennsylvania. 


320  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

CHAPTER  XXXIV. 
EARLY  IRON   ENTERPRISES    IN  MICHIGAN. 

IF  we  could  credit  the  census  of  1840  there  were  fifteen 
blast  furnaces  in  Michigan  in  that  year — one  in  each  of  the 
counties  of  Allegan,  Branch,  Cass,  Kent,  Monroe,  and  Oak- 
land, two  in  Calhoun,  two  in  Washtenaw,  and  five  in  Wayne 
county.  Some  of  these  furnaces  were  doubtless  foundries, 
particularly  in  counties  lying  upon  or  near  to  Lake  Erie, 
vessels  upon  which  could  bring  pig  iron  for  these  foundries 
from  the  neighboring  States.  Others  were  undoubtedly  true 
blast  furnaces,  producing  household  and  other  castings  from 
bog  ores.  All  of  the  fifteen  enterprises  mentioned  were  in 
the  southern  part  of  the  State.  Their  total  production  in 
1840  was  only  601  tons  of  "  cast  iron."  Neither  forges  nor 
bloomaries  are  mentioned  in  the  census  of  1840. 

From  1840  to  1850  the  iron  industry  of  Michigan  certain- 
ly made  no  progress,  and  possibly  declined.  From  1850  to 
1860  a  marked  improvement  took  place.  Three  new  furna- 
ces were  built  in  the  southern  part  of  the  State  to  use  bog 
ore,  and  in  the  northern  peninsula  and  at  Detroit  and  Wyan- 
dotte  a  commencement  was  made  in  smelting  the  rich  ores 
which  had  been  discovered  in  the  now  celebrated  Lake  Su- 
perior iron-ore  region.  In  1859  Lesley  enumerated  the  fol- 
lowing bog-ore  furnaces  in  the  southern  part  of  the  State : 
Kalamazoo,  at  the  city  of  that  name,  in  Kalamazoo  county, 
built  in  1857  to  take  the  place  of  an  earlier  furnace ;  Quin- 
cy,  three  miles  north  of  the  town  of  that  name,  in  Branch 
county,  built  in  1855  ;  and  Branch  County,  one  mile  from 
Quincy  furnace,  built  in  1854.  All  of  these  bog-ore  furnaces 
made  pig  iron  in  1857.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  furnaces  to 
use  bog  ore  should  have  been  built  in  this  State  after  1850. 

The  development  of  the  Lake  Superior  iron-ore  region 
marks  an  important  era  in  the  history  of  the  American  iron 
trade,  and  the  incidents  attending  its  commencement  have 
fortunately  been  preserved. 

We  learn  from  A.  P.  Swineford's  History  of  tJie  Lake  Supe- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  321 

rior  Iron  District  that  the  existence  of  iron  ore  on  the  south- 
ern border  of  Lake  Superior  was  known  to  white  traders 
with  the  Indians  as  early  as  1830.  The  same  writer  further 
informs  us  that  the  first  discovery  by  white  men  of  the  iron 
ore  of  this  region  was  made  on  the  16th  of  September,  1844, 
near  the  eastern  end  of  Teal  lake,  by  William  A.  Burt,  a  dep- 
uty surveyor  of  the  General  Government.  In  June,  1845,  the 
Jackson  Mining  Company  was  organized  at  Jackson,  Michi- 
gan, for  the  purpose  of  exploring  the  mineral  districts  of  the 
southern  shore  of  Lake  Superior,  and  in  the  m summer  of  the 
same  year  this  company,  through  the  disclosures  of  a  half- 
breed  Indian  named  Louis  Nolan  and  the  direct  agency  of 
an  old  Indian  chief  named  Man-je-ki-jik,  secured  possession 
of  the  now  celebrated  Jackson  iron  mountain,  near  the  scene 
of  Mr.  Burt's  discovery.  It  appears,  however,  that  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  company  had  not  heard  of  Mr.  Burt's  dis- 
covery until  they  met  Nolan  and  the  Indian  chief.  P.  M. 
Everett,  the  president  of  the  company,  was  the  leading  spirit 
of  the  exploring  party  which  secured  possession  of  this  valu- 
able property..  The  actual  discovery  of  Jackson  mountain 
was  made  by  S.  T.  Carr  and  E.  S.  Rockwell,  members  of 
Mr.  Everett's  party,  who  were  guided  to  the  locality  by  the 
Indian  chief. 

Referring  to  the  iron  ore  of  Jackson  mountain  in  a  letter 
written  at  Jackson,  Michigan,  on  the  10th  of  November,  1845, 
Mr.  Everett  says  that  "  since  coming  home  we  have  had  some 
of  it  smelted,  and  find  that  it  produces  iron  and  something 
resembling  gold — some  say  it  is  gold  and  copper."  This 
smelting  is  not  further  described.  In  1846  A.  V.  Berry,  one 
of  the  Jackson  Mining  Company,  and  others  brought  about 
300  pounds  of  the  ore  to  Jackson,  and  in  August  of  that  year, 
writes  Mr.  Berry,  "Mr.  Olds,  of  Cucush  Prairie,  who  owned  a 
forge,  then  undergoing  repair,  in  which  he  was  making  iron 
from  bog  ore,  succeeded  in  making  a  fine  bar  of  iron  from  our 
ore  in  a  blacksmith's  fire,  the  first  iron  ever  made  from  Lake 
Superior  ore."  Mr.  Swineford  says  that  "  one  end  of  this  bar 
of  iron  Mr.  Everett  had  drawn  out  into  a  knife-blade." 

In  1847  the  Jackson  Mining  Company  commenced  the 
erection  of  a  forge  on  Carp  river,  about  ten  miles  from  its 
mouth  and  near  Jackson  mountain.  It  was  finished  early 


322  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

in  1848,  and  on  the  10th  of  February  of  that  year  the  first 
iron  made  in  the  Lake  Superior  region  was  made  here  by 
Ariel  N.  Barney.  Mr.  Swineford  says  that  the  forge,  which 
was  named  after  Carp  river,  had  "  eight  fires,  from  each  of 
which  a  lump  was  taken  every  six  hours,  placed  under  the 
hammer,  and  forged  into  blooms  four  inches  square  and  two 
feet  long,  the  daily  product  being  about  three  tons.  The  first 
lot  of  blooms  made  at  this  forge,  the  first  iron  made  on  Lake 
Superior,  and  the  first  from  Lake  Superior  ores,  except  the 
small  bar  made  by  Mr.  Olds,  was  sold  to  the  late  E.  B.  Ward, 
and  from  it  was  made  the  walking-beam  of  the  side-wheel 
steamer  Ocean."  The  forge  was  kept  in  operation  until  1854, 
when  it  was  abandoned,  having  in  the  meantime  "  made  little 
iron  and  no  money." 

In  1849  the  Marquette  Iron  Company,  a  Worcester  (Mas- 
sachusetts) organization,  undertook  the  erection  of  a  forge  at 
Marquette,  and  in  July,  1850,  it  was  finished  and  put  in  oper- 
ation. Mr.  Swineford  says  that  "  it*  started  with  four  fires, 
using  ores  from  what  are  now  the  Cleveland  and  Lake  Su- 
perior mines."  It  was  operated  irregularly  until  December, 
1853,  when  it  was  burned  down  and  was  not  rebuilt. 

The  Collins  Iron  Company  was  organized  in  1853,  with 
Edward  K.  Collins,  of  New  York,  at  its  head,  and  in  1854  it 
built  a  forge  on  Dead  river,  about  three  miles  northwest  of 
Marquette,  and  in  the  fall  of  1855  the  manufacture  of  blooms 
was  commenced  from  ore  obtained  at  the  company's  mines. 
This  forge  was  in  operation  in  1858,  after  which  time  it  seems 
to  have  been  abandoned. 

Another  forge  on  Dead  river  was  built  in  1854  or  1855  by 
William  G.  McComber,  Matthew  McConnell,  and  J.  G.  Butler. 
The  company  failed  in  a  few  years,  and  in  1860  Stephen  R. 
Gay  erected  Bancroft  furnace  on  the  site  of  the  forge.  Before 
1860  every  forge  in  Michigan  appears  to  have  been  aban- 
doned. (Mr.  Butler  was  the  father  of  J.  G.  Butler,  Jr.,  of 
Youngstowii,  Ohio,  the  present  general  manager  of  the  Brier 
Hill  Iron  and  Coal  Company.) 

It  will  be  observed  that  all  of  the  pioneer  iron  enterprises 
in  the  Lake  Superior  region  were  bloomary  forges,  the  inten- 
tion evidently  having  been  to  build  up  an  iron  industry  simi- 
lar to  that  of  the  Lake  Champlain  district. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  323 

The  first  pig  iron  produced  in  the  Lake  Superior  region 
was  made  in  1858  by  Stephen  R.  Gay,  who  then  leased  the 
forge  of  the  Collins  Iron  Company  and  converted  it  in  two 
days,  at  an  expense  of  $50,  into  a  miniature  blast  furnace. 
In  February,  1858,  as  we  learn  from  the  records  of  the  Ameri- 
can Iron  and  Steel  Association,  Mr.  Gay  wrote  to  C.  A.  Trow- 
bridge  that  this  furnace  was  "  2-J  feet  across  the  bosh,  8  feet 
high,  and  12  inches  square  at  the  top  and  15  inches  square 
in  the  hearth,"  and  would  hold  eight  bushels  of  coal.  He 
gives  the  following  details  of  its  first  and  only  blast :  "  Began 
on  Monday,  finished  and  fired  on  Wednesday,  filled  with  coal 
Thursday  noon,  blast  turned  on  Friday  noon,  and  thenceforth 
charged  regularly  with  1  bushel  coal,  20  pounds  of  ore,  and 
7  pounds  of  limestone.  Cast  at  six  o'clock  500  pounds,  and 
again  at  eight  o'clock  Saturday  morning,  half  a  ton  in  all,  92 
pounds  of  which  were  forged  by  Mr.  Eddy  into  an  85-pound 
bloom.  This  little  furnace  was  run  two  and  a  half  days, 
made  2^  tons,  carrying  the  last  eight  hours  30  pounds  of  ore 
to  a  bushel  of  coal,  equal  to  a  ton  of  pig  iron  to  100  bushels 
of  coal."  These  experiments  were  made  in  February. 

The  first  regular  blast  furnace  in  the  Lake  Superior  region 
was  built  by  the  Pioneer  Iron  Company  in  the  present  city 
of  Negaunee,  convenient  to  the  Jackson  mine.  It  was  com- 
menced in  June,  1857,  and  in  February,  1858,  it  was  finished. 
Another  stack  was  added  in  the  same  year.  These  furnaces 
took  the  name  of  the  company.  Pioneer  No.  1  was  put  in 
blast  in  April,  1858,  and  Pioneer  No.  2  on  May  20,  1859. 
Both  furnaces  are  now  owned  by  the  Iron  Cliffs  Company. 
They  were  burned  and  rebuilt  in  1877.  They  were  both  in 
operation  in  1883  and  have  since  been  active.  The  second 
regular  blast  furnace  in  this  region  was  the  Collins  furnace, 
built  in  1858  by  Stephen  R.  Gay,  near  the  site  of  the  Collins 
forge.  It  made  its  first  iron  on  December  13th  of  that  year. 
It  was  abandoned  in  1873,  owing  to  the  failure  of  a  supply 
of  charcoal.  Other  furnaces  in  the  Lake  Superior  region  soon 
followed  the  erection  of  the  Pioneer  and  Collins  furnaces. 
Mr.  Swineford's  history  contains  a  record  of  these  early  en- 
terprises. 

While  these  early  furnaces^and  the  few  forges  that  have 
been  mentioned  were  being  built  on  the  shore  of  Lake  Supe- 


324  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

rior  two  furnaces  were  built  at  or  near  Detroit  to  smelt  Lake 
Superior  ores.  These  were  the  Eureka  furnace,  at  Wyandotte, 
built  in  1855  by  the  Eureka  Iron  Company,  of  which  Cap- 
tain E.  B.  Ward  was  president,  and  put  in  blast  in  1856  ;  and 
the  Detroit  furnace,  at  Detroit,  built  in  1856  by  the  Detroit 
and  Lake  Superior  Iron  Manufacturing  Company,  of  which 
George  B.  Russell  was  president,  and  put  in  blast  in  January, 
1857.  These  furnaces  and  the  others  that  have  been  men- 
tioned used  charcoal  as  fuel. 

The  first  shipment  of  iron  ore  from  the  Lake  Superior  re- 
gion was  made  in  1850,  according  to  Mr.  Swineford,  and  con- 
sisted of  about  five  tons,  "which  was  taken  away  by  Mr.  A. 
L.  Crawford,  of  New  Castle,  Pennsylvania."  A  part  of  this 
ore  was  reduced  to  blooms  and  rolled  into  bar  iron.  "  The 
iron  was  found  to  be  most  excellent,  and  served  to  attract 
the  attention  of  Pennsylvania  ironmasters  to  this  new  field 
of  supply  for  their  furnaces  and  rolling  mills."  Mr.  Craw- 
ford informed  us  in  his  lifetime  that  he  received  at  New 
Castle  in  1850  about  ten  tons  of  Jackson  ore  which  had  been 
hauled  around  the  falls  of  Sault  Ste.  Marie  on  a  strap  rail- 
road one  and  a  quarter  miles  long.  In  1853  a  few  tons  of 
Jackson  ore  were  shipped  to  the  World's  Fair  at  New  York. 

The  first  use  of  Lake  Superior  ore  in  a  blast  furnace  oc- 
curred in  Pennsylvania.  This  important  event  is  described 
in  a  letter  to  us  from  the  late  David  Agnew,  of  Sharpsville, 
Mercer  county,  Pennsylvania,  from  which  we  quote  as  follows. 

The  Sharon  Iron  Company,  of  Mercer  county,  Pennsylvania,  about  the 
year  1850  or  1851  purchased  the  Jackson  mines,  and,  in  expectation  of  the 
speedy  completion  of  the  Sault  canal,  commenced  to  open  them,  to  con- 
struct a  road  to  the  lake,  and  to  build  docks  at  Marquette,  expending  a 
large  sum  of  money  in  these  operations.  The  opening  of  the  canal  was, 
however,  unexpectedly  delayed  until  June,  1855.  Anxious  to  test  the  work- 
ing qualities  of  this  ore  the  Sharon  Iron  Company  brought,  at  great  ex- 
pense, to  Erie,  in  the  year  1853,  about  70  tons  of  it,  which  were  shipped 
by  canal  to  Sharpsville  furnace,  near  Sharon,  owned  by  David  and  John  P. 
Agnew.  The  first  boat-load  of  ore,  on  its  receipt,  was  immediately  used  in 
the  furnace,  partly  alone  and  partly  in  mixture  with  native  ores,  and  the 
experiment  was  highly,  successful,  the  furnace  working  well  and  producing 
an  increased  yield  of  metal,  which  was  taken  to  the  Sharon  iron  works  and 
there  converted  into  bar  iron,  nails,  etc.,  of  very  superior  quality.  The 
second  boat-load  of  ore  was  also  brought  to  Sharpsville,  but,  having  been 
intended  to  be  left  at  the  Clay  furnfce,  owned  by  the  Sharon  Iron  Com- 
pany, was  returned  and  used  at  that  establishment. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  .        325 

The  historical  interest  which  attaches  to  the  first  use  of 
Lake  Superior  iron  ore  leads  us  to  copy  the  following  details 
concerning  the  Sharon  Iron  Company  and  its  connection  with 
the  development  of  the  Jackson  iron  mountain  ore.  Our  au- 
thority is  a  pamphlet  copy  of  the  prospectus  of  the  Sharon 
Iron  Company,  printed  in  1852.  We  quote  from  the  pam- 
phlet, (which  is  signed  by  J.  B.  Curtis,  president,)  as  follows. 

The  Sharon  Iron  Company  was  organized  at  Sharon,  Mercer  county, 
Pennsylvania,  in  1850,  with  a  capital  of  $70,0£>0,  under  the  general  manu- 
facturing law-  of  the  State. of  Pennsylvania,  and  possesses  a  charter  from 
that  State.  The  manufacture  of  iron  and  nails  was  commenced  in  Decem- 
ber, 1850,  and  the  mill  is  in  successful  operation  at  the  present  time.  The 
company  also  own  a  blast  furnace,  with  the  necessary  buildings,  ore,  and 
coal  privileges — now  making  forty-five  tons  of  pig  iron  weekly,  at  a  cost 
of  eighteen  dollars  per  ton — situated  one  mile  from  the  canal,  and  eight 
miles  from  the  mill,  which  they  purchased  on  very  advantageous  terms. 

The  president  of  the  company  having  visited  the  iron  region  of  Lake 
Superior  in  the  fall  of  1850  became  so  impressed  with  the  boundless  extent, 
unrivaled  richness,  and  great  facilities  of  obtaining  the  ore  of  that  region, 
(and  the  specimens  he  procured  having  proved,  on  test,  the  superior  qual- 
ity and  purity  of  the  iron,)  he  recommended  the  company  to  purchase  the 
Jackson  mountain,  as  being  the  nearest,  largest,  and  best  location,  a  prop- 
erty owned  by  a  corporate  company,  located  in  Jackson  county,  Michigan. 
This  property  consists  of  640  acres  of  land,  (the  Iron  mountain,)  200  acres 
lying  between  the  mountain  and  lake,  on  which,  there  is  a  good  water 
power,  a  forge  for  making  blooms  in  operation,  and  twenty  dwelling-houses, 
and  also  60  acres  of  land  at  the  harbor,  on  Lake  Superior,  called  Iron  bay. 
After  several  attempts  at  negotiation  the  president  of  the  Sharon  Iron 
Company,  with  others  in  interest,  succeeded,  in  September,  1851,  in  pur- 
chasing a  controlling  interest  in  said  property,  obtaining  1,507  shares  out 
of  3,000  at  $15  per  share,  amounting  to  $22,605. 

The  Sharon  Iron  Company  have  manufactured  this  season  150  tons 
blooms,  made  at  the  Jackson  forge,  into  bar,  boiler  plate,  nails,  etc.  They 
have  readily  sold  the  bar  iron  at  $80  per  ton,  when  common  puddled  iron 
goes  begging  at  $50  per  ton.  It  has  been  tested  for  steel  wire  and  fine 
tacks,  and  proved  equal  to  the  best  Swedes. 

In  1854, 1855,  and  1856  Clay  furnace,  which  was  located  on 
Anderson's  run,  nine  miles  west  of  Mercer,  continued  the  use 
of  Lake  Superior  ore,  most  of  it  mixed  with  native  ore,  and 
used  in  all  until  August,  1856,  about  400  tons.  "  Up  to  that 
'date,"  as  is  stated  by  Mr.  Frank  Allen,  its  manager,  "  the 
working  of  it  was  not  a  success.  In  October,  1856,  we  gave 
the  Clay  furnace  a  general  overhauling,  put  in  a  new  lining 
and  hearth,  and  made  material  changes  in  the  construction 
of  the  same,  put  her  in  blast  late  in  the  fall,  and  in  a  few 


326 


THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 


days  were  making  a  beautiful  article  of  iron  from  Lake 
Superior  ore  alone."  The  fuel  used  at  Sharpsville  and  Clay 
furnaces  was  the  block  coal  of  the  Shenango  valley.  After 
1856  other  furnaces  in  Pennsylvania  and  in  other  States  be- 
gan the  regular  use  of  Lake  Superior  ore. 

David  Agnew  was  born  at  Frankstown,  in  Blair  county, 
Pennsylvania,  on  September  25, 1805,  and  died  at  Sharpsville, 
in  Mercer  county,  on  August  24, 1882,  aged  almost  77  years. 
His  whole  life  was  devoted  to  the  manufacture  of  iron. 

Until  about  1877  the  mining  of  .iron  ore  in  the  Lake 
Superior  region  was  confined  to  the  territory  in  the  immedi- 
ate vicinity  of  Marquette.  Since  1877,  and  particularly  since 
1879,  a  new  iron-ore  region  has  been  developed  in  the  north- 
ern part  of  Menominee  county  and  the  southern  part  of  Mar- 
quette county,  in  Michigan,  and  in  Florence  county,  Wiscon- 
sin. It  is  called  the  Menominee  district.  This  region  has 
proved  to  be  very  productive  and  the  ore  to  be  very  pure. 

In  1884  the  Vermilion  iron-ore  district,  in  St.  Louis 
county,  Minnesota,  on  the  northern  shore  of  Lake  Superior, 
became  a  competitor  with  the  Marquette  and  Menominee 
districts  in  the  production  and  shipment  of  iron  ore,  and  in 
the  same  year  the  Gogebic  district,  which  lies  west  of  the 
Menominee  district  and  is  partly  in  Michigan  and  partly  in 
Wisconsin,  also  became  a  competitor.  The  shipments  from 
the  Vermilion  district  in  1884  aggregated  62,124  gross  tons, 
and  the  shipments  from  the  Gogebic  district  in  the  same 
year  aggregated  1,022  tons.  The  total  shipments  of  iron  ore 
from  the  Marquette,  Menominee,  Gogebic,  and  Vermilion  dis- 
tricts from  1884  to  1890  have  been  as  follows,  in  gross  tons. 


Districts. 

1884. 

1885. 

1886. 

1887. 

1888. 

1889. 

1890. 

Marquette....... 
Menominee  
Gogebic  

1,558,033 
895,634 
1,022 

1,430,422 
690,435 
119,590 

1,627,383 
880,006 
756,237 

1,851,717 
1,199,343 
1,285,265 

1,926,954 
1,191,097 
1,433,689 

2,634,817 
1,796,764 
2,016,391 

2,997,927 
2,289,017 
2,845,171 

Vermilion  

62,124 

225,484 

304,396 

394,252 

511,953 

844,782 

880,264 

Total  

2,516,813 

2,465,931 

3,568,022 

4,730,577 

5,063,693 

7,292,754 

9,012,379' 

In  addition  to  the  shipments  above  recorded  there  were 
also  shipped  in  1884  and  1885  a  few  tons  of  iron  ore  from 
a  few  small  mines  in  Michigan  which  are  not  properly  in 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES. 


327 


any  of  the  districts  mentioned.  These  shipments  amounted 
to  1,879  gross  tons  in  1884  and  to  441  tons  in  1885.  Ship- 
ments from  these  mines  do  not  appear  to  have  been  continued. 
From  the  Marquette  Mining  Journal  we  compile  the  fol- 
lowing table  of  the  aggregate  shipments  from  all  the  Lake 
Superior  iron-ore  mines  for  each  calendar  year  since  the 
commencement  of  regular  mining  operations  in  the  region. 


Years. 

Gross  tons. 

Years. 

Gross  tons. 

Years. 

Gross  tons. 

1854 

3  000 

1867 

473  567 

1880 

1  908  745 

1855 

1  449 

1868 

491  449 

1881 

o  3Qg  5Q5 

1856 

36  343 

1869      .  .  . 

617  444 

1882 

2  965  412 

1857 

25  646 

1870   

830940 

1883 

2  353  288 

1858 

15876 

1871  

779  607 

1884 

2  518  692 

1859 

68  832 

1872  

900901 

1885 

9  466  372 

1860 

114  401 

1873  

1  162  458 

1886 

3  568  092 

1861 

49909 

1874  

919557 

1887 

4  730  577 

186-7 

124,169 

1875  

891,257 

1888 

5  063  693 

186;?   .    

203  055 

1876  

992,764 

1889 

7  292  754 

1864 

243  127 

1877  

1,015,087 

1890 

9  Ol9  379 

236  *?08 

1878 

1  111  110 

1866 

°78  796 

1879 

1  375  691 

Total 

57  149  082 

The  iron  ores  of  Lake  Superior  which  are  not  used  in 
Michigan  are  mainly  shipped  to  Ohio,  Pennsylvania,  Illinois, 
and  Wisconsin.  They  have  been  shipped  as  far  east  as  the 
Hudson  river  valley  in  New  York  for  blast-furnace  use  and 
as  far  south  as  Alabama  for  use  in  puddling  furnaces.  About 
one-half  of  all  the  pig  iron  that  is  now  manufactured  in 
the  United  States  is  made  from  these  ores. 

From  the  discovery  of  iron  ore  in  the  Lake  Superior  re- 
gion until  1883  there  had  been  built  on  the  upper  peninsula, 
in  the  vicinity  of  the  mines,  twenty-five  furnaces,  of  which 
thirteen  had  been  abandoned.  There  had  also  been  built  at 
other  points  in  Michigan,  to  use  Lake  Superior  ore,  sixteen 
furnaces,  of  which  none  had  been  abandoned  in  1883.  All  of 
these  furnaces,  with  the  exception  of  two  at  Marquette  and 
one  at  Detroit,  were  built  to  use  charcoal,  and  the  abandon- 
ment of  many  of  them  is  attributable  to  the  scarcity  of  tim- 
ber for  fuel.  Since  1883  there  have  been  five  furnaces  built 
or  restored  in  Michigan,  while  a  few  have  been  abandoned, 
the  whole  number  of  furnaces  in  the  State  at  the  beginning 
of  1891  being  twenty-nine,  all  charcoal  furnaces  except  one. 
Michigan  has  long  been  the  first  State  in  the  Union  in  the 


328  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

manufacture  of  charcoal  pig  iron.  Its  largest  production  of 
pig  iron,  all  made  with  charcoal,  was  in  1890,  when  258,461 
net  tons  were  produced.  The  three  %  bog-ore  furnaces  in  Kal- 
amazoo  and  Branch  counties  have  long  been  abandoned. 

In  1884  there  wrere  three  active  rolling  mills  in  Michigan  : 
the  Eureka,  formerly  the  Wyandotte,  at  Wyandotte,  built  in 
1855;  the  rolling  mill  of  the  Baugh  Steam  Forge  Company, 
at  Detroit,  built  in  1877,  the  forge  having  been  built  in  1870 ; 
and  the  works  of  the  Detroit  Steel  and  Spring  Company,  at 
Detroit,  which  had  recently  commenced  the  manufacture  of 
crucible  steel.  In  1891  the  same  rolling  mills  were  still  in 
operation,  and  a  new  one,  built  in  1890,  was  in  operation  at 
Muskegon.  The  Detroit  Steel  and  Spring  Company  added 
a  Robert-Bessemer  steel  plant  to  its  works  in  1889.  In  1871 
a  rolling  mill  was  built  at  Marquette  which  has  since  been 
abandoned.  In  1872  a  rolling  mill  was  built  at  Jackson, 
in  Jackson  county,  but  it  was  torn  down  in  1879  and  the 
machinery  removed  to  the  mill  of  the  Springfield  Iron  Com- 
pany, at  Springfield,  Illinois. 

Captain  Ward  was  the  most  prominent  of  all  the  pioneer 
iron  manufacturers  of  Michigan,  his  enterprise  in  this  respect 
extending  to  other  States  than  his  own. 

In  1870  Michigan  ranked  eighth  in  the  list  of  iron  and 
steel  producing  States,  and  in  1880  its  rank  was  the  same. 
In  1890  it  was  the  ninth  in  rank. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  329 

CHAPTER   XXXV. 

• 

THE  EAKLY  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  WISCONSIN. 

THE  census  of  1840  mentions  a  furnace  in  "  Milwaukee 
town,"  which  produced  three  tons  of  iron  in  that  year.  This 
was  probably  a  small  foundry.  In  1859  Lesley  mentions' 
three  charcoal  furnaces  in  Wisconsin — Northwestern,  or  May- 
ville,  at  Mayville,  in  Dodge  county,  forty  miles  northwest  of 
Milwaukee  and  five  miles  from  the  Iron  ridge,  built  in  1848 
by  the  owners  of  Mishawaka  furnace  in  Indiana,  and  to 
which  a  foundry  was  added  in  1858 ;  Ironton,  at  Ironton,  in 
Sauk  county,  built  in  1857  by  Jonas  Tower ;  and  Black  Riv- 
er, built  in  1857  by  a  German  company  on  the  east  bank  of 
Black  river,  near  the  falls,  in  Jackson  county.  Of  these  fur- 
naces at  least  one,  Ironton,  was  built  to  produce  castings.  A 
description  of  it  in  1858  says  :  "  It  is  a  small  blast  furnace, 
capable  of  producing  about  three  tons  of  iron  per  day,  and 
intended  for  the  manufacture  of  stoves,  castings,  etc."  The 
Ironton  furnace  has  recently  produced  castings  as  well  as  pig 
iron.  The  Mayville  furnace  is  still  in  operation,  having  been 
rebuilt  in  1872,  but  the  Black  River  furnace  has  long  been 
abandoned.  In  its  stead  there  was  erected  in  1885  and  1886 
a  modern  charcoal  furnace,  known  as  the  Minneapolis  fur- 
nace, owned  by  the  York  Iron  Company.  There  appear  to 
have  been  neither  forges  nor  bloomaries  in  Wisconsin  in  the 
census  years  1840,  1850,  and  1860. 

The  furnaces  which  have  been  mentioned  were  all  that 
Wisconsin  could  boast  until  1865,  when  a  charcoal  furnace  at 
Iron  Ridge,  in  Dodge  county,  was  built  by  the  Wisconsin  Iron 
Company.  This  was  soon  followed  by  several  other  furnaces, 
some  of  which  were  built  to  use  native  ores  and  some  to  use 
Michigan  ores  from  Lake  Superior.  The  Appleton  Iron  Com- 
pany built  two  furnaces  at  Appleton,  in  Outagamie  county, 
in  1.871  and  1872  ;  C.  J.  L.  Meyer  built  a  furnace  at  Fond  du 
Lac  in  1874,  but  it  was  not  put  in  blast  until  the  summer  of 
1883 ;  the  Fox  River  Iron  Company  built  two  furnaces  at 
West  De  Pere,  in  Brown  county,  in  1869  and  1872 ;  the  Green 


330  THE    MANUFACTURE    OP 

Bay  Iron  Company  built  a  furnace  at  Green  Bay,  in  the  same 
county,  in  1870  ;  and  the  National  Furnace  Company  built 
two  furnaces  at  De  Pere,  in  the  same  county,  in  1869  and 
1872.  All  of  these  ftirnaces  were  built  to  use  charcoal.  In 
1870  and  1871  the  Milwaukee  Iron  Company  built  two  large 
furnaces  at  Bay  View,  near  Milwaukee,  and  in  1873  the  Mi- 
nerva Iron  Company  built  a  furnace  at  Milwaukee.  These 
three  furnaces  were  built  to  use  anthracite  coal  and  bitumi- 
nous coke  and  Lake  Superior  ores.  A  furnace  called  Rich- 
land  was  built  in  1876  at  Cazenovia,  in  Richland  county,  but 
was  torn  down  in  1879.  In  1883  there  were  fifteen  furnaces 
in  the  State,  twelve  of  which  used  charcoal  and  three  used 
anthracite  coal  and  coke.  In  1890,  however,  the  whole  num- 
ber of  completed  furnaces  had  been  reduced  to  ten,  of  which 
six  used  charcoal  and  four  used  coke.  A  new  coke  furnace 
was  in  course  of  erection  at  West  Superior,  in  Douglas  coun- 
ty. In  1887  and  1888  there  was  built  at  Ashland,  in  Ashland 
county,  a  charcoal  furnace,  60  feet  high  by  12  feet  in  width  at 
the  boshes,  which  has  made  the  best  record  in  production  of 
any  charcoal  furnace  in  the  United  States.  This  furnace  is 
called  Hinkle.  Nearly  all  the  old  charcoal  furnaces  of  Wis- 
consin have  been  abandoned. 

Wisconsin  had  no  rolling  mill  until  1868,  when  its  first 
and  thus  far  its  only  active  mill  was  built  at  Milwaukee  by 
the  Milwaukee  Iron  Company,  of  which  Captain  E.  B.  Ward 
was  a  leading  member.  This  was  from  .the  first  a  large  mill. 
It  was  built  to  re-roll  iron  rails,  but  soon  commenced  the 
manufacture  of  new  rails.  In  1874  a  merchant  bar  mill  was 
added,  and  in  1884  a  nail  mill  was  added.  This  mill  and 
the  two  Bay  View  furnaces  were  operated  in  1883  by  the 
North  Chicago  Rolling  Mill  Company,  but  they  are  now 
owned  by  the  Illinois  Steel  Company. 

Within  the  last  few  years  the  mining  of  iron  ore  in  Flor- 
ence county,  Wisconsin,  forming  the  western  continuation  of 
the  Menominee  district  in  Michigan,  has  been  prosecuted  with 
much  activity.  In  1882  there  were  shipped  from  this  county 
276,017  tons  of  iron  ore.  But  the  greatest  development  of 
the  iron-ore  resources  of  Wisconsin  has  taken  place  since  1884 
in  the  Gogebic  district,  situated  in  the  counties  of  Ashland, 
in  Wisconsin,  and  Ontonagon  and  Gogebic,  in  Michigan,  the 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  331 

statistics  of  which  district  have  already  been  given  in  the 
Michigan  chapter.  The  early  charcoal  furnaces  of  Wiscon- 
sin used  poor  ores,  which  were  not  at  all  comparable  with  the 
rich  ores  now  obtained  in  the  Gogebic  and  other  districts  of 
the  Lake  Superior  region. 

Wisconsin  advanced  rapidly  in  the  manufacture  of  iron 
in  the  decade  between  1870  and  1880.  In  the  latter  year  it 
ranked  sixth  among  the  iron  and  steel  producing  States  of 
the  Union.  In  1870  it  was  twelfth  in  rank.  In  1890  it  had 
retrograded  and  was  eighth  in  rank,  being  intermediate  be- 
tween its  position  in  1870  and  1880.  It  has  not  yet  produced 
any  kind  of  steel.  In  1890  the  building  of  a  Bessemer  steel 
plant  was,  however,  undertaken  at  West  Superior,  in  Wis- 
consin. Its  completion  in  the  latter  part  of  1891  is  promised. 


/ 
332  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 
EAKLY   IRON   ENTERPRISES  IN  MISSOURI. 

MISSOURI  Jias  an  iron  history  which  antedates  its  admis- 
sion into  the  Union  in  1821.  The  celebrated  iron  district  in 
Iron  and  St.  Frangois  counties,  which  embraces  Iron  Moun- 
tain and  Pilot  Knob,  appears  to  have  contained  the  first  iron 
enterprise  in  this  State. 

Mr.  William  A.  Fletcher,  of  Ironton,  clerk  of  the  court  of 
Iron  county,  writes  us  as  follows :  "  There  was  once  an  iron 
furnace  in  the  northeast  quarter  of  section  3,  township  33, 
north  of  range  4  east,  on  Stout's  creek,  just  two  miles  east 
of  the  Ironton  court-house.  Some  of  the  debris  remains  to 
be  seen  to  this  day.  I  can  recollect  seeing  some  of  the  old 
castings,  in  the  shape  of  wheels,  scattered  around  when  I 
was  a  small  boy  some  forty  years  ago." 

We  are  also  in  receipt  of  a  letter  from  Mr.  A.  W.  Hollo- 
man,  of  Arcadia,  the  county  surveyor  of  Iron  county  for  the 
last  thirty-three  years,  who  gives  us  the  recollections  of  Mr. 
Leonard  Sutton,  an  old  settler,  who  distinctly  remembers  the 
iron  enterprise  on  Stout's  creek,  which  he  styles  Ashebran's 
furnace.  Mr.  Sutton  says  that  the  furnace  was  located  on 
Stout's  creek,  about  one  and  a  half  miles  from  the  settle- 
ment of  his  father,  who  moved  into  the  northeast  corner  of 
Iron  county  (then  known  as  Upper  Louisiana  Territory)  in 
1817.  He  further  says  that  the  furnace  was  built  by  a 
person  named  Ashebran  and  others  about  1815  or  1816,  and 
that  he  has  often  seen  "the  old  shaft,"  to  haul  which  requir- 
ed the  efforts  of  twelve  oxen.  Mr.  Holloman  says  that  he 
has  himself  often  seen  the  site  of  the  furnace,  or,  as  he  terms 
it,  the  forge.  Mr.  Sutton  adds  that  the  ore  for  the  furnace 
was  obtained  on  Shepherd  mountain,  which  was  about  three 
miles  northwest  of  the  furnace.  Mr.  Holloman  says  that  there 
can  be  no  doubt  of  the  existence  of  this  pioneer  enterprise  as 
early  as  1815  or  1816. 

In  a  second  letter  from  Mr.  Holloman  he  says  that  Mr. 
Sutton  tells  him  that  " castings"  were  made  on  Stout's  creek, 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  333 

"  but  mostly  bar  iron,"  and  Mr.  Holloman  himself  says  that 
it  is  his  own  impression  that  "  bar  iron  was  what  was  most- 
ly made  by  this  infant  enterprise."  Mr.  Sutton  further  says 
that  "  on  one  end  of  the  big  shaft  was  a  water-wheel  and  on 
the  other  end  was  a  wheel  so  arranged  as  to  lift  the  hammer 
which  beat  out  the  bars  of  iron."  He  intimates  that  a  water- 
blast  was  used.  In  a  second  communication  Mr.  Fletcher 
states  that  he  often  heard  his  father  speak  many  years  ago 
of  the  bar  iron  that  was  hammered  at  Ashebran's  works,  and 
of  Ashebran  himself  as  a  hammerman.  The  evidence  seems 
to  be  conclusive  that  both  castings  and  bar  iron  were  made 
by  Ashebran.  Either  a  furnace  and  a  refinery  forge  were 
cotemporary  enterprises  or  a  furnace  and  a  Catalan  forge 
were  built  at  different  periods.  The  works  were  located  on  a 
stream  which  furnished  excellent  water-power. 

Another  early  enterprise  in  Missouri  of  which  we  have 
obtained  full  information  was  a  bloomary  forge  on  Thicketty 
creek,  a  tributary  of  the  Maramec  river,  in  Crawford  county, 
near  the  Washington  county  line,  three  miles  south  of  the 
present  town  of  Bourbon.  Cresswell's  mill  was  afterwards 
built  about  one  hundred  yards  from  the  site  of  this  early 
iron  enterprise.  The  bloomary  was  variously  styled  Harri- 
son's furnace,  Harrison's  forge,  Harrison's  bloomary,  and  the 
Harrison  iron  works.  The  works  were  of  a  primitive  char- 
acter, consisting  of  "  a  stone  stack  built  into  the  hill  so  that 
it  could  be  easily  filled  from  the  top.  It  was  rudely  con- 
structed of  logs  and  rock."  They  were  built  in  1819  or  1820 
by  William  Harrison  and  Josiah  Reeves,  and  were  certainly 
in  operation  in  1820.  Thomas  Reeves  was  the  forgeman.  We 
are  told  that  the  bloomary  "  was  built  like  a  blacksmith's 
forge,  only  much  larger,  and  was  a  water-blast.  The  ore  was 
burnt,  then  crushed,  and  put  into  the  forge  with  charcoal. 
The  iron  was  made  into  long  bars."  It  was  used  for  wagon 
tires,  mattocks,  grubbing  hoes,  plowshares,  horseshoes,  etc. 
The  bloom  of  iron  was  hammered  under  a  spring-pole  ham- 
mer on  an  anvil  which  rested  upon  "  an  anvil-block  formed 
of  a  section  of  a  tree  four  feet  in  diameter  and  buried  mostly 
in  the  ground."  The  ore  used  was  brown  hematite  mixed 
with  blue  ore ;  it  was  hauled  in  ox-carts  from  the  adjacent 
hills  by  Battle  Harrison,  a  son  of  William  Harrison.  The 


334  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

works  continued  in  operation  for  several  years.  They  have 
*  long  been  in  ruins,  as  is  also  Cresswell's  mill. 

For  the  above  circumstantial  information  concerning  the 
Harrison  bloomary  we  are  indebted  to  the  politeness  of  B.  F. 
Russell,  Esq.,  editor  of  the  Crawford  Mirror,  at  Steelville,  Mis- 
souri. Judge  Robinson,  who  was  reared  in  the  Iron  Moun- 
tain country,  and  who  has  been  consulted  by  Mr.  Russell, 
says  that  there  was '"a  log  furnace"  in  Iron  county  which 
"  was  built  about  the  time  of  the  Harrison  bloomary,"  thus 
confirming  other  information  which  we  have  given  concern- 
ing that  enterprise. 

A  few  years  after  the  establishment  of  the  Harrison 
bloomary  a  blast  furnace,  called  Springfield,  was  built  in 
Washington  county,  about  six  miles  south  of  Potosi.  The 
geologist  G.  C.  Swallow  is  quoted  by  Lesley  on  page  597  of 
The  Iron  Manufacturer's  Guide  as  follows  :  "  The  earliest  at- 
tempt in  Missouri,  and  in  all  probability  in  any  of  the  States 
west  of  the  Ohio,  to  smelt  iron  ore  was  in  1823  or  1824,  when 
/a  blast  furnace  was  erected  in  Washington  county  by  Eversol, 
Perry  &  Ruggles,  between  Potosi  and  Caledonia.  This  fur- 
nace was  afterwards  known  as  Perry's  old  iron  furnace."  The 
ore  for  this  furnace  was  at  first  obtained  from  Claer  creek, 
but  afterwards  "  from  near  Absalom  Eaton's  place,  and  was 
mixed  with  ore  brought  from  the  Iron  Mountain."  Mr.  Swallow 
continues :  "  In  connection  with  this  blast  furnace  were  two 
forges.  The  first  bar  of  iron  made  out  of  pig  metal  in  Mis- 
souri, Colonel  Mcllvaine  says,  was  made  on  Cedar  creek  in 
May,  1825,  and  the  first  blooms  were  made  in  1832."  The 
enterprise  here  referred  to  was  Springfield  furnace,  but  it  was 
not  the  first  furnace  in  Missouri,  as  has  already  been  shown. 

In  the  prospectus  of  the  Missouri  Iron  Company,  printed 
in  1837,  we  find  it  stated  that  Springfield  furnace  had  been 
operated  "for  more  than  fifteen  years  "  prior  to  that  year.  In 
that  year  the  furnace  was  in  operation,  when  it  was  called 
"  a  small  furnace."  A  forge  was  then  attached  to  it,  and 
"  a  blooming  forge  "  was  promised  "  the  ensuing  year."  The 
prospectus  further  states  that  "  cannon  balls,  made  from  the 
Iron  Mountain  ore  during  the  late  war,  after  having  been 
exposed  for  several  years  to  the  open  atmosphere  and  rains, 
still  maintained  their  original  metallic  lustre."  The  cannon 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  335 

balls  referred  to. would  probably  be  used  in  the  Black  Hawk 
war  of  1832.  Mr.  Russell  tells  us  that  cannon  balls  were 
certainly  made  for  the  General  Government  at  Springfield 
furnace  in  1832,  citing  as  his  authority  a  history  of  Craw- 
ford and  Franklin  counties  in  his  possession. 

Maramec  furnace,  in  Phelps  county,  about  sixty  miles  west 
of  Iron  Mountain,  was  finished  in  January,  1829,  and  rebuilt 
many  years  afterwards.  It  was  probably  projected  in  1826,  as 
in  that  year  the  ore  banks  in  the  vicinity,  about  half  a  mile 
west  of  the  Maramec  river,  wrere  opened  by  Massey  &  James. 
The  ore  was  tested  at  Harrison's  bloomary  before  the  furnace 
was  built.  This  old  furnace  was  still  standing  a  few  years 
ago,  but  it  was  not  in  operation  and  has  now  tfeen  abandoned. 
At  an  early  day  a  forge  was  added  to  the  furnace,  to  convert 
its  pig  iron  into  bar  iron,  and  this  forge,  with  eight  fires,  was 
also  recently  standing  but. abandoned,  its  product  being  char- 
coal blooms.  In  1843  a  rolling  mill  was  added  to  the  furnace 
and  forge,  but  it  was  "  abandoned  after  one  year's  trial,  be- 
cause of  the  sulphur  in  the  stone  coal  obtained  at  a  bank 
fourteen  miles  southeast."  The  Maramec  furnace  and  forge 
were  long  called  the  Massey  iron  works. 

In  the  census  of  1840  Missouri  is  credited  with  two  fur- 

\y 

naces,  one  in  Crawford  county  and  one  in  Washington  county. 
It  is  also  credited  with  three  forges  in  Crawford  county  and 
one  in  Washington  county.  The  furnace  in  Crawford  county 
was  Maramec,  Phelps  county  not  having  then  been  organiz- 
ed, and  the  forges  in  Crawford  county  were  doubtless  attach- 
ed to  Maramec  furnace.  The  furnace  in  Washington  county 
was  Springfield,  and  the  forge  was  doubtless  the  one  which 
was  attached  toHhis  furnace.  We  do  not  hear  of  Springfield 
furnace  and  forge  after  this  time. 

In  1836  the  remarkable  iron-ore  mountains  already  men- 
tioned— Iron  Mountain  and  Pilot  Knob — attracted  the  atten- 
tion of  some  Missouri  capitalists,  and  in  the  fall  of  that  year 
the  Missouri  Iron  Company,  with  a  nominal  capital  of  $5,000,- 
000,  was  formed  to  utilize  their  ores,  the  legislature  charter- 
ing the  company  on  December  31,  1836.  In  January,  1837, 
the  company  was  fully  organized  under  the  presidency  of 
Silas  Drake,  of  St.  Louis,  who  was  soon  succeeded  by  J.  L. 
Van  Doren,  of  Arcadia,  but  active  work  in  the  development 


336  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

of  its  property  does  not  appear  to  have  been  undertaken  until 
some  years  afterwards,  when  a  few  furnaces  were  erected  at 
the  foot  of  the  mountains  by  other  companies.  In  1846  a 
furnace  was  built  at  the  southwest  base  of  Little  Iron  Moun- 
tain, which  was  followed  in  1850  by  another  furnace  at  the 
same  place,  and  in  1854  by  still  another.  In  1849  a  furnace 
was  built  on  the  north  side  of  Pilot  Knob,  which  was  follow- 
ed in  1855  by  another  at  the  same  place.  These  were  all 
charcoal  furnaces,  and  were  exceptionally  well  managed  in 
1857,  when  they  were  visited  and  described  by  Charles  B. 
Forney,  of  Lebanon,  Pennsylvania.  At  that  time  two  of  the 
Iron  Mountain  furnaces  and  one  of  the  Pilot  Knob  furnaces 
used  hot-blast.  Of  all  these  furnaces  only  one  of  the  Pilot 
Knob  furnaces  is  now  left,  and  it  was  remodeled  in  1879. 

In  1846  Moselle  furnace  was  built  at  Moselle,  in  Franklin 
/  county,  and  in  1859  a  furnace  was  built  at  Irondale,  in  Wash- 
ington county,  both  furnaces  to  use  charcoal.  These,  with  the 
furnaces  previously  mentioned,  appear  to  have  been  all  that 
were  built  in  Missouri  prior  to  1860.  Both  the  Moselle  and 
the  Irondale  furnaces  have  been  abandoned.  Since  1860, 
and  particularly  since  1870,  other  charcoal  furnaces  have  been 
built  in  Missouri,  but  most  of  these  have  been  abandoned, 
only  two  of  the  new  furnaces,  Midland,  in  Crawford  county, 
built  in  1875,  and  Sligo,  in  Dent  county,  built  in  1880,  being 
now  active. 

The  iron  industry  of  St.  Louis  appears  to  have  had  its 
commencement  in  1850,  when  the  St.  Louis,  or  Laclede,  roll- 
ing mill  was  built.  It  was  followed  by  the  Missouri  rolling 
mill,  built  in  1854;  by  the  Allen  rolling  mill,  built  in  1855; 
by  the  Pacific  rolling  mill,  built  in  1856;  and  by  Raynor's 
rolling  mill,  built  in  1858. 

In  1880  there  were  seven  rolling  mills  in  St.  Louis,  and 
there  were  then  no  others  in  Missouri.  One  of  these,  the 
Vulcan,  built  in  1872,  wras  built  to  roll  iron  rails  but  after- 
wards rolled  steel  rails.  Two  other  mills  rolled  light  iron 
rails  and  bar  iron.  In  1882  there  was  one  rolling  mill  less 
than  in  1880,  six  in  all,  and  there  were  seven  in  1890,  five 
in  St.  Louis.  The  Bessemer  works  of  the  Vulcan  Steel  Com- 
pany were  built  in  1875  and  1876.  They  and  the  rolling 
mill  connected  with  them  are  now  idle.  They  are  owned 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  337 

by  the  St.  Louis  Ore  and  Steel  Company.  Missouri  had  no 
other  steel  works  in  1883.  In  1887  Mr.  J.  H.  Sternbergh,  of 
Reading,  Pennsylvania,  commenced  the  erection  of  bolt  and 
nut  works,  to  which  was  attached  a  small  rolling  mill,  near 
Kansas  City,  and  in  1889  a  rolling  mill  of  considerable  ca- 
pacity was  built  at  St.  Joseph,  to  Avhich  was  added  in  1890 
a  Robert-Bessemer  steel  plant. 

St.  Louis  had  no  blast  furnaces  until  1863,  when  the  Pi- 
oneer furnace  was  built  at  Carondelet,  to  use  coke.  It  was 
in  blast  in  1873,  but  in  1874  it  was  torn  down  and  remov- 
ed by  the  Pilot  Knob  Iron  Company.  In  1869  the  Vulcan 
Iron  Works,  now  the  St.  Louis  Ore  and  Steel  Company, 
built  two  furnaces,  which  were  followed  in  1872  by  another 
furnace  built  by  the  same  company.  In  1870  and  1872  the 
South  St.  Louis  Iron  Company  built  two  furnaces  ;  in  1870 
the  Missouri  Furnace  Company  built  two  ;  and  in  1873  Ju- 
piter furnace  was  built,  but  it  was  not  put  in  blast  until 
1880.  These  eight  furnaces  were  all  built  to  use  Illinois  or 
Connellsville  coke  and  Missouri  ores.  Of  the  whole  number 
only  five  are  now  standing,  and  not  all  of  these  are  active. 

In  1871  a  large  forge,  called  the  Germania  iron  works,  was 
built  at  South  St.  Louis  to  make  charcoal  blooms  from  pig 
iron,  but  it  has  been  abandoned  for  several  years.  In  1873  a 
forge  was  built  at  Kimmswick,  in  Jefferson  county,  which  was 
enlarged  and  remodeled  in  1877  by  the  Peckham  Iron  Com- 
pany, its  product  after  the  enlargement  being  charcoal  blooms 
made  direct  from  the  ore.  It  was  in  operation  in  1886,  but 
has  since  been  abandoned  and  dismantled. 

In  1883  there  were  nine  charcoal  furnaces  and  eight  coke 
furnaces  in  Missouri,  but  in  1890  there  were  only  three  char- 
coal furnaces  and  five  coke  furnaces  which  could  be  regarded 
as  active  or  likely  to  be  active.  From  1870  to  1880  the  iron 
industry  of  Missouri  was  the  prey  of  adverse  circumstances, 
and  in  the  latter  year  it  lost  the  prominent  rank  it  had  held 
among  iron-producing  States.  It  ranked  sixth  in  1870,  but 
in  1880  it  had  fallen  to  the  tenth  place.  In  1890  it  was  thir- 
teenth in  rank.  The  shipments  of  iron  ore  from  Missouri 
to  other  States  for  many  years  averaged  over  100,000  tons 
annually,  but  they  have  now  greatly  declined,  and  are  so 
small  that  they  do  not  attract  any  attention. 


338  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

CHAPTER   XXXVII. 
THE   MANUFACTURE   OF   IRON   IN  TEXAS. 

TEXAS  had  one  blast  furnace  before  the  beginning  of  the 
civil  war.  It  was  located  in  the  extreme  northeastern  part 
of  Cass  county,  and  had  been  in  operation  for  several  years 
prior  to  1859.  In  that  year  Dr.  B.  F.  Shumard,  State  geol- 
ogist, said  of  this  furnace  that  "it  was  erected  several  years 
since  by  Mr.  Nash,"  whose  full  name  was  J.  S.  Nash.  Dr. 
Shumard  said  that  it  had  been  "  in  nearly  constant,  and  I 
believe  profitable,  operation  up  to  the  present  time."  This 
furnace  continued  in  operation  during  the  war. 

In  1859  the  erection  of  a  furnace  about  one  and  a  half 
miles  southeast  of  Hughes  Springs,  in  the  southwestern  part 
of  Cass  county,  was  commenced,  but  the  furnace  was  not 
put  in  blast  until  1861.  "  Mr.  Hughes  built  the  furnace  but 
never  operated  it,  as  the  Confederate  Government  took  charge 
of  it  soon  after  its  erection."  In  1863  the  Sulphur  Fork 
Iron  Company  built  a  furnace  "on  Horton's  headright,  just 
west  of  Springdale,"  in  Cass  county.  "  The  furnace  was  built 
of  brick,  and  was  34  feet  square  and  36  feet  high."  During 
the  war  a  furnace  was  built  about  eight  miles  from  Jack- 
sonville and  three  miles  from  the  Neches  river,  in  Cherokee 
county,  which  was  known  as  Young's  iron  works,  taking  its 
name  from  Dr.  Young,  the  president  of  the  company  which 
built  it.  This  furnace  was  built  of  brown  sandstone,  and 
was  34  feet  square  at  the  base  and  the  same  number  of  feet 
high.  About  eight  miles  south  of  Rusk,  in  Cherokee  county, 
were  located  Philleo's  iron  works,  consisting  of  a  blast  fur- 
nace and  foundry,  which  were  also  built  during  the  war. 

While  these  furnaces  were  in  operation  during  the  civil 
war,  partly  in  aid  of  the  Confederate  Government,  other  iron 
enterprises  were  undertaken  in  Texas.  All  these  enterprises 
were  ore  bloomaries.  Near  Nechesville,  in  Anderson  county, 
a  bloomary  was  erected  in  1863  by  Dr.  Charles  Bussey  and 
Joseph  P.  Griggs,  with  whom  was  afterwards  associated  Dr. 
J.  B.  Bussey.  This  bloomary  was  operated  with  steam-power 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  339 

"  and  two  tub  bellows,  or  blowing  cylinders."  Good  iron  was 
made  with  ore  from  a  neighboring  mountain  and  pine  char- 
coal. The  works  were  burned  before  the  war  closed.  A 
bloomary  called  Montalbo  was  built  about  1863  on  the  south- 
ern bank  of  Mount  Prairie  creek,  eight  or  nine  miles  north  of 
Palestine,  in  Anderson  county,  and  about  ten  miles  south  of 
the  Nechesville  bloomary,  which  was  operated  by  the  Con- 
federate Government.  "  From  the  iron  smelted  there  gun 
barrels  and  other  munitions  of  war  were  manufactured."  A 
short  distance  north  of  the  Nechesville  bloomary,  in  the  vicin- 
ity of  Kickapoo,  the  Confederate  Government  began  the  erec- 
tion of  Kickapoo  fcloomary,  but,  as  far  as  can  be  ascertained, 
it  was  never  completed.  A  bloomary,  known  as  McLain,  or 
Linn  Flat,  was  built  during  the  latter  part  of  the  war  in  the 
northern  part  of  Nacogdoches  county,  about  twelve  miles  from 
the  town  of  Nacogdoches  and  six  miles  from  Linn  Flat.  It 
was  in  operation  eight  months,  and  during  that  time  made 
about  150,000  pounds  of  hammered  iron  bars.  This  bloom- 
ary, like  the  Nechesville  bloomary,  was  burned.  In  addition 
to  the  bloomaries  above  mentioned  another  was  undertaken 
by  the  Confederate  Government  a  few  miles  east  of  Neches- 
ville, in  Cherokee  county,  but  it  was  never  finished. 

Without  an  exception  all  the  furnaces  and  bloomaries  in 
Texas  which  have  been  mentioned  were  abandoned  either 
during  the  civil  war  or  soon  after  its  close. 

For  the  information  contained  in  the  foregoing  summary 
of  early  iron  enterprises  in  Texas  we  are  indebted  to  a  valu- 
able paper  contributed  by  E.  T.  Durable  and  to  be  found  in 
the  second  annual  report  of  the  Geological  Survey  of  Texas, 
published  by  the  State  in  1891. 

In  1869  a  charcoal  furnace  was  built  five  miles  north  of 
Jefferson,  in  Marion  county,  which  went  into  blast  in  1870 
but  was  rebuilt  in  1874.  It  was  in  operation  in  1880,  and 
was  then  the  only  active  furnace  in  the  State.  It  was  called 
Kelly  furnace,  after  Mr.  G.  A.  Kelly,  the  president  of  the 
Jefferson  Iron  Company,  by  which  it  was  built.  In  1882  it 
was  sold  to  the  Marshall  Car  Wheel  and  Foundry  Company, 
which  changed  its  name  to  Lou-Ellen  furnace  and  operated  it 
until  1885,  when  it  was  finally  blown  out.  It  was  torn  down 
in  1888.  It  used  brown  hematite  ore  found  in  the  neigh- 


340  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

borhood.  In  1883  a  furnace  was  built  by  the  State  of  Texas 
at  Rusk,  in  Cherokee  county,  and  called  Old  Alcalde.  It 
was  put  in  blast  in  February,  1884,  since  which  time  it  has 
been  almost  continually  in  operation.  A  pipe  foundry  is 
connected  with  the  furnace,  and  melted  iron  is  run  directly 
into  water  pipe  of  all  sizes.  These  works  are  owned  and 
operated  by  the  State  of  Texas  in  connection  with  the  State 
penitentiary  at  Rusk.  In  1890  the  Lone  Star  Iron  Company 
built  a  large  furnace  at  Jefferson,  in  Marion  county,  which 
was  blown  in  in  the  spring  of  1891.  The  name  of  the  fur- 
nace is  Jefferson.  In  1890  the  New  Birmingham  Iron  and 
Land  Company  built  a  large  furnace  called  Tassie  Belle  at 
New  Birmingham,  in  Cherokee  county,  which  was  put  in 
blast  in  the  latter  part  of  that  year.  In  1890  the  Cherokee 
Iron  Manufacturing  Company  commenced  the  erection  at 
New  Birmingham  of  a  large  furnace,  at  first  called  La  Mas- 
cotte  and  now  known  as  Star  and  Crescent,  which  would 
probably  be  completed  in  1891.  All  these  are  charcoal  fur- 
naces. 

The  first  rolling  mill  in  Texas  was  started  at  Houston  in 
May,  1884.  A  small  rolling  mill  at  Fort  Worth  was  built 
in  1890  and  1891  and  put  in  operation  in  the  latter  year. 
The  Houston  and  Fort  Worth  mills  do  not  have  puddling 
furnaces. 

Texas  is  well  supplied  with  iron  ores,  some  of  which  are 
said  to  be  of  Bessemer  quality,  and  for  many  years  to  come 
there  will  be  no  scarcity  of  timber  for  charcoal.  Brown  coal 
exists  in  many  parts  of  the  State,  and  good  coking  coal  has 
been  fo^nd  in  the  southwestern  portion.  Much  is  expected 
from  the  promised  development  at  an  early  day  of  the  exten- 
sive iron-ore  deposits  of  Llano  and  adjacent  counties.  From 
this  time  forth  Texas  is  entitled  to  recognition  as  one  of  the 
promising  iron-producing  States  of  the  Union. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  341 


CHAPTER   XXXVIII. 

THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  IRON  IN  VARIOUS  WESTERN 
STATES  AND  IN  THE  TERRITORIES. 

IN  1884  Minnesota  had  one  charcoal  furnace,  situated  at 
Duluth,  which  was  commenced  in  1872  and  not  finished  un- 
til 1880.  It  was  put  in  blast  on  July  12,  1880,  and  ran  ir- 
regularly until  1883,  after  which  year  it  was  virtually  aban- 
doned. It  is  now  wholly  abandoned.  Its  projectors  failed, 
and  after  passing  through  the  hands  of  creditors  it  was  pur- 
chased by  the  Duluth  Iron  Company.  It  obtained  its  sup- 
ply of  ore  from  the  Lake  Superior  mines  in  Michigan.  In 
1889  the  Duluth  Iron  and  Steel  Company  commenced  the 
erection  at  Duluth  of  a  large  coke  furnace,  75  feet  high  by 
16  feet  wide,  which  has  since  been  completed  but  had  not 
been  blown  in  early  in  1891.  In  1884  a  small  rolling  mill 
was  built  and  put  in  operation  at  Minneapolis  by  Strothman 
Brothers,  but  it  was  abandoned  and  dismantled  in  1887.  In 
1885  and  1886  Morgan,  Williams  &  Co.  built  a  small  rolling 
mill  at  St.  Paul,  which  was  afterwards  known  as  the  Capital 
iron  works,  but  it  was  not  long  in  operation  and  has  been 
abandoned.  In  1888  and  1889  a  more  ambitious  rolling- 
mill  enterprise  was  undertaken  at  Duluth  by  the  Minnesota 
Iron  Car  Company,  and  in  the  latter  'year  it  was  put  in  op- 
eration. It  was  in  active  operation  in  1890.  The  valuable 
iron-ore  deposits  in  the  Vermilion  district  of  Saint  Louis 
county,  Minnesota,  have  already  been  referred  to  in  the 
Michigan  chapter.  The  ore  of  this  district  possesses  the 
same  general  characteristics  as  that  of  Northern  Michigan. 
Iron  ore  has  been  found  in  other  counties  in  Minnesota. 

In  1857  a  bloomary  called  Big  Creek  was  built  about  six  \ 
miles  southwest  of  Smithville,  in  Lawrence  county,  Arkansas, 
by  Alfred  Bevens  &  Co.  In  1858  Lesley  describe*  it  as  "a 
bloomary  with  two  fires  and  a  hammer,  making  250  pounds 
of  swedged  iron  per  day  per  fire,  with  a  cold-blast  in  Novem- 
ber, 1857,  but  has  now  a  hot-blast,  and  is  making  perhaps  800 
pounds,  using  300  bushels  of  charcoal  to  the  ton  of  finished 


342  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

bars,  made  out  of  brown  hematite  ore."  The  bloomary  was 
driven  by  water-power.  It  is  not  mentioned  in  the  census  of 
1860  or  1870,  and  has  been  abandoned.  Mr.  Clarke  W.  Har- 
rington, of  Berry ville,  Carroll  county,  writes  us  that  in  1850 
an  Englishman  named  Abram  Beach  built  a  bloomary  in  this 
county,  which  was  in  operation  for  a  few  years,  when  it  was 
swept  away  by  a  freshet.  It  was  succeeded  by  the  "  Hig- 
gins  grist  mill."  The  hammer  used  at  this  bloomary  may 
now  be  seen  on  its  site.  Mr.  Harrington  says  that  "Beach 
made  a  large  number  of  plow  coulters,  many  of  which  are 
still  in  use."  From  the  same  gentleman  we  learn  that  old 
residents  of  Carroll  county  have  a  tradition  that  iron  was 
once  made  in  that  county  in  hollow  stumps  of  trees,  which 
is  not  improbable,  the  iron  ore  of  this  county  being  a  soft 
hematite,  which  could  easily  be  reduced.  Iron  ore  of  the 
quality  mentioned  is  very  abundant  near  Berryville.  We 
have  no  knowledge  that  any  other  iron  enterprises  than 
those  above  mentioned  have  ever  existed  in  this  State. 

Arkansas  is,  however,  not  lacking  in  the  natural  resources 
which  are  required  for  the  production  of  iron.  It  has  iron 
ore,  coal,  and  limestone,  and  extensive  forests  of  timber. 
In  1885  two  companies  commenced  the  development  of  the 
manganese  deposits  in  the  neighborhood  of  Batesville,  in  the 
northeastern  part  of  this  State,  but  their  operations  have  not 
been  very  actively  prosecuted.  The  total  production  of  man- 
ganese in  Arkansas  in  1889  was  2,528  gross  tons. 

In  a  pamphlet,  entitled  the  Products  and  Resources  of  Ar- 
kansas, compiled  by  D.  McRae,  and  published  by  direction 
of  the  Governor  of  Arkansas  in  1885,  we  find  the  following 
reference  to  a  deposit  of  iron  ore  which  is  found  in  South- 
western Arkansas.  "  Altogether  the  most  remarkable  and  in- 
teresting mineral  of  all  this  region  is  the  white  malleable 
iron,  regarding  the  existence  and  malleability  of  which  a 
great  deal  of  skepticism  is  said  to  exist.  It  is  found  in  the 
corner  of  Howard  county  adjoining  the  frontier  of  Mont- 
gomery, f^olk,  and  Pike.  During  the  war,  it  is  stated  on 
good  authority,  the  inhabitants  of  the  vicinity  used  to  take 
the  ore  as  it  was  picked  up  from  the  ground  and  in  an  or- 
dinary blacksmith's  forge  hammer  it  into  horseshoe  nails. 
The  outcrop  of  this  ore,  as  far  as  it  has  been  explored,  runs 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  343 

for  two  miles  west  to  east,  showing  a  width  of  from  15  to 
30  feet,  with  an  unknown  depth." 

Kansas  had  two  rolling  mills  in  operation  in  1880,  both 
of  which  were  built  to  re-roll  rails.  One  of  these,  at  Rose- 
dale,  in  Wyandotte  county,  three  miles  from  Kansas  City, 
was  then  owned  by  the  Kansas  Rolling  Mill  Company. 
This  mill  was  once  in  operation  at  Decatur,  Illinois,  where  it 
was  built  in  1870,  and  whence  it  was  removed  to  Rosedale 
in  1875.  It  is  now  owned  by  the  Western  Iron  Company. 
It  has  been  idle  since  1882.  The  other  mill  was  located  at 
Topeka,  and  was  built  in  1874  by  the  Topeka  Rolling  Mill 
Company.  This  mill  was  burned  in  April,  1881,  and  was  not 
rebuilt. 

In  1885  the  Iowa  Rolling  Mill  Company  built  a  rolling 
mill  for  the  manufacture  of  bar  iron  at  Burlington,  Iowa, 
and  in  the  same  year  it  was  put  in  operation.  In  1887  it 
was  enlarged  and  in  1889  it  was  still  further  enlarged.  It 
was  idle  in  1890.  This  is  the  only  iron  enterprise  in  Iowa. 

Nebraska  had  one  iron  enterprise  in  operation  in  1880, 
a  rolling  mill  and  cut-nail  factory  at  Omaha,  owned  by  the 
Omaha  Iron  and  Nail  Company.  These  works  were  first 
built  at  Dunleith,  Illinois,  in  1875  and  1876,  and  were  re- 
moved to  Omaha  in  1879  and  considerably  enlarged.  They 
had  -an  annual  capacity  of  65,000  kegs  of  nails.  These 
works  have  been  abandoned.  The  machinery  was  removed 
to  St.  Joseph,  Missouri,  in  1888  and  1889. 

The  first  iron  enterprise  in  Colorado  was  a  small  charcoal 
furnace  at  Langford,  in  Boulder  county,  in  the  northern  part 
of  the  State.  Its  erection  was  undertaken  in  1862  by  a  com- 
pany called  Langford  &  Co.,  composed  of  A.  G.  Langford, 
J.  M.  Marshall,  William  L.  Lee,  and  Milo  Lee,  and  it  was 
finished  and  put  in  blast  in  1864.  In  1865  it  went  out  of 
blast  and  was  soon  afterwards  abandoned.  It  is  said  that 
"  in  a  two-months'  run  some  250  tons  of  pig  iron  "  were  pro- 
duced. Iron  ore  was  obtained  in  the  neighborhood  and  char- 
coal was  burned  "  in  the  foot-hills."  Mr.  Marshall  was  the 
manager.  The  furnace  was  abandoned  because  oxen  furnish- 
ed the  only  mode  of  transportation,  which  was  too  expensive. 
In  1861  the  same  company  built  a  foundry  at  Denver,  but 
during  the  next  year  it  was  removed  to  Blackhawk,  in  Gilpin 


344  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

county.  The  furnace  at  Langford  was  built  to  supply  pig 
iroh  for  foundry  purposes.  Bituminous  coal  is  now  mined 
at  Langford,  and  extensive  deposits  of  iron  ore  are  near  at 
hand. 

In  1877  a  rolling  mill  was  removed  by  William  Faux 
from  Danville,  Pennsylvania,  to  Pueblo,  Colorado,  and  put  in 
operation  on  March  1, 1878,  the  product  being  re-rolled  rails. 
In  the  same  year  it  was  removed  to  Denver.  In  1880  this 
mill  was  purchased  from  the  Denver  Rolling  Mill  Company 
by  the  Colorado  Coal  and  Iron  Company.  It  was  at  work  in 
1883,  rolling  bar  iron  as  well  as  re-rolling  rails.  It  was  aban- 
doned in  1889.  In  1880  the  Colorado  Coal  and  Iron  Com- 
pany commenced  the  erection  of  a  large  coke  furnace  at 
Pueblo,  Colorado,  which  was  put  in  blast  on  September  7, 
1881.  In  the  former  year  it  also  commenced  the  construction 
of  Bessemer  steel  works  at  the  same  place,  which  were  finish- 
ed in  1882.  These  enterprises  formed  the  beginning  of  a  very 
extensive  and  complete  establishment,  which  now  embraces 
two  blast  furnaces,  Bessemer  steel  works,  rolling  mills  for 
rolling  steel  rails,  bar  iron,  etc.,  a  pipe  foundry,  and  a  nail 
mill.  The  erection  of  a  third  blast  furnace  has  been  com- 
menced. Extensive  coke  works  have  been  built  by  the  com- 
pany at  El  Moro,  Crested  Butte,  and  elsewhere.  At  Gunnison 
the  erection  of  two  furnaces  to  use  coke  was  undertaken  by 
the  Gunnison  Coal  and  Steel  Company  in  1884,  but  the  fur- 
naces were  never  built.  At  Trinidad,  in  Los  Animas  county, 
a  rolling  mill  was  built  in  1888  and  1889  and  put  in  opera- 
tion in  April,  1889,  to  roll  bar  iron  and  light  rails. 

The  Union  Pacific  Railroad  Company  built  a  rolling  mill 
to  re-roll  rails  at  Laramie  City,  Wyoming,  in  1874,  and  put 
it  in  operation  in  April,  1875.  It  has  ever  since  been  in  op- 
eration, but  its  products  are  now  bar  iron,  mine  rails,  nuts, 
bolts,  spikes,  and  track  fastenings. 

In  1859  Lesley  reported  a  forge  in  Utah  Territory, "  smelt- 
ing iron  ore  found  in  the  mountains  east  of  Salt  Lake  City, 
but  no  reliable  information  could  be  obtained  respecting  it." 
It  does  not  appear  in  the  census  of  1860.  Dr.  J.  S.  Newberry 
writes  that  in  1880  he  "  visited  the  deposit  of  crystalline  iron 
ore  of  Iron  county,  in  the  southern  part  of  the  Territory. 
These  ore  beds  have  been  long  known,  and  were  to  some  ex- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  345 

tent  utilized  by  the  Mormons  in  their  first  advent  thirty  years 
ago.  The  iron  region  referred  to  lies  nearly  '300  miles  direct- 
ly south  of  Salt  Lake  City."  In  1873  and  1874  the  Great 
Western  Iron  Company,  of  which  John  W.  Young  was  pres- 
ident, built  a  charcoal  furnace  at  Iron  City,  in  Iron  county. 
It  was  in  blast  in  1874  and  the  two  following  years,  but  was 
afterwards  abandoned  and  has  had  no  successor.  It  was  a 
very  small  furnace,  being  only  19  feet  high  and  4  feet  wide 
at  the  boshes,  with  a  daily  capacity  of  5  tons.  The  erection 
of  a  much  larger  furnace,  also  to  use  charcoal,  was  com- 
menced at  Ogden  City,  Utah,  in  1875,  by  the  Ogden  Iron 
Manufacturing  Company,  and  was  intended  to  use  hematite 
and  magnetic  ores  found  in  the  neighborhood.  The  furnace 
was  completed  and  put  in  blast  in  1882,  but  was  blown  out 
after  making  a  small  quantity  of  pig  iron,  and  has  been 
abandoned.  The  same  company  commenced  building  a  roll- 
ing mill  at  Ogden  City  in  1875,  which  was  not  completed 
until  1882.  It  appears  to  have  never  been  put  in  operation. 
In  1884  the  machinery  was  removed  to  Pueblo,  Colorado, 
where  it  was  added  to  the  plant  of  the  Colorado  Coal  and 
Iron  Company.  Utah  not  only  contains  extensive  deposits  of 
very  pure  iron  ore  in  Iron  county  and  elsewhere  but  it  also 
contains  plenty  of  coal  in  Iron  and  other  counties,  some  of 
which  is  said  to  make  good  coke. 


346  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

CHAPTER  XXXIX. 
THE  IRON  INDUSTRY   ON  THE  PACIFIC    COAST. 

CALIFORNIA  has  had  for  many  years  a  complete  rolling 
mill  at  San  Francisco,  owned  by  the  Pacific  Rolling  Mill 
Company.  It  was  first  put  in  operation  on  July  25, 1868.  It 
rolls  rails,  bar  iron,  angle  iron,  shafting,  etc.  An  open-hearth 
steel  plant  was  added  in  1884,  and  the  first  steel  on  the  Pacific 
coast  was  made  on  July  15, 1884.  These  works  were  in  oper- 
ation in  1891,  and  have  always  been  well  employed.  In  1881 
the  Central  Pacific  Railroad  Company  built  a  rolling  mill  at 
Sacramento  to  roll  bar  iron  and  shaped  iron.  In  1883  the 
Judson  Manufacturing  Company  completed  and  put  in  opera- 
tion a  rolling  mill  at  Oakland  for  the  manufacture  of  bar  and 
plate  iron ;  and  in  the  same  year  the  Pacific  Iron  and  Nail 
Company  completed  and  put  in  operation  at  the  same  place 
a  large  rolling  mill  and  nail  factory,  with  an  annual  capac- 
ity of  more  than  100,000  kegs  of  nails.  At  San  Francisco 
there  is  an  extensive  shipyard  for  building  iron  and  steel 
vessels,  known  as  the  Union  Iron  Works,  at  which  large  war 
ships  for  the  United  States  navy  have  recently  been  built. 

The  first  vessel  of  iron  or  steel  built  on  the  Pacific  coast 
was  the  Arago,  a  screw  steamer  of  828  gross  tons.  She  was 
built  by  the  Union  Iron  Works,  of  San  Francisco,  for  the 
Newport  Coal  Company,  of  Coos  bay,  Oregon,  and  she  was 
launched  on  April  2,  1885.  This  vessel  was  built  entirely 
of  steel,  the  steel  shapes  being  rolled  by  the  Pacific  Rolling 
Mill  Company,  of  San  Francisco,  and  the  steel  plates  by  Car- 
negie, Phipps  &  Co.,  of  Pittsburgh.  Her  compound  engine 
is  of  450  nominal  horse-power.  She  has  been  steadily  en- 
gaged in  the  coal  trade  between  Coos  bay  and  San  Francisco. 

California  has  been  unfortunate  with  her  only  blast  fur- 
nace. The  California  Iron  and  Steel  ^Company  commenced 
in  1880  the  erection  of  a  charcoal  furnace  at  Clipper  Gap, 
in  Placer  county,  where  iron  ore  had  been  discovered,  and 
the  furnace  was  put  in  blast  in  April,  1881,  and  the  first  cast 
was  made  on  the  24th  of  that  month.  It  was  burned  down 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  347 

in  1882  and  rebuilt  in  1883  and  again  put  in  operation,  but 
it  has  been  out  of  blast  since  1886  and  may  be  regarded  as 
abandoned.  Its  fuel  was  charcoal.  Unless  good  coking  coal 
should  be  discovered  in  California  it  is  not  probable  that  this 
State  will  ever  make  much  pig  iron,  although  it  possesses 
many  deposits  of  good  iron  ore,  some  of  which  are  of  Bes- 
semer quality.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the  Mexican  inhab- 
itants of  California  ever  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  iron 
even  in  the  most  primitive  manner.  In  Lower  California, 
just  over  the  California  State  line,  extensive  deposits  of  rich 
iron  ore  and  anthracite  coal  have  recently  been  discovered. 

At  Oswego,  in  Clackamas  cotmty,  Oregon,  nine  miles  from 
Portland,  a 'furnace  to  use  charcoal  was  built  in  1866  and 
1867  by  the  Oswego  Iron  Company  and  blown  in  on  August 
27,  1867.  It  was  enlarged  in  1879  by  other  proprietors.  In 
1883  it  produced  7,000  net  tons  of  pig  iron.  It  was  operated 
irregularly  until  1886,  when  it  was  purchased  by  the  Oregon 
Iron  and  Steel  Company,  which  built  a  new  furnace  in  1888, 
abandoning  the  old  one  in  the  same  year.  The  charcoal  for 
both  furnaces  has  been  made  exclusively  from  the  fir  tree. 

A  furnace  at  Irondale,  near  Port  Townsend,  in  Jefferson 
county,  Washington,  was  built  in  1880  and  put  in  blast  on 
January  27,  1881.  It  was  rebuilt  in  1882  and  1883  and  re- 
modeled in  1884.  It  is  still  a  small  furnace.  It  was  built 
to  make  charcoal  pig  iron  from  Puget  sound  bog  ore  mixed 
with  Texada  Island  magnetic  ore.  It  is  owned  by  the  Puget 
Sound  Iron  Company,  of  San  Francisco.  It  has  not  recently 
been  in  blast.  -  In  1891  plans  were  in  progress  for  the  erec- 
tion of  a  furnace  at  Kirkland,  near, Seattle.  This  State  con- 
tains extensive  deposits  of  hard  coal,  some  of  wrhich  makes 
good  coke,  and  as  iron  ores  are  to  be  found  within  its  own 
borders  and  near  at  hand  on  British  territory,  some  in  Wash- 
ington just  discovered,  it  is  expected  that  other  iron  enter- 
prises will  soon  follow  those  which  have  been  mentioned. 


THE  States  and  Territories  which  have  not  been  referred 
to  in  these  pages  are  believed  to  have  never  been  engaged  in 
the  manufacture  of  iron,  although  iron  ore  has  been  found 
in  Louisiana  and  in  some  of  the  States  and  Territories  of 
the  Rocky  Mountain  region  which  have  not  been  mentioned. 


348  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

CHAPTER  XL. 
THE  FIRST  IRON  WORKS  IN   CANADA. 

A  NOTICE  in  these  pages  of  the  first  iron  works  in  Cana- 
da will  be  read  with  interest,  especially  as  these  works  were 
recently  in  operation.  They  are  known  as  the  forges  of  St. 
Maurice,  and  are  located  near  Three  Rivers,  in  the  province 
of  Quebec.  Mr.  A.  T.  Freed,  the  editor-in-chief  of  the  Ham- 
ilton (Ontario)  Spectator,  informs  us  that  iron  ore  in  the 
vicinity  of  Three  Rivers  was  discovered  as  early  as  1667. 
In  1672  the  Count  de  Frontenac  reported  that  he  had  com- 
menced to  mine  the  ore  at  Three  Rivers.  He  strongly  urged 
the  establishment  of  forges  and  a  foundry.  In  1685  the 
Marquis  de  Denonville  sent  to  France  a  sample  of  the  ore 
at  Three  Rivers,  which  the  French  ironworkers  found  to  be 
"  of  good  quality  and  percentage."  But  no  effort  to  establish 
iron  works  at  this  place  appears  to  have  been  made  until  the 
next  century,  when  the  St.  Maurice  works  were  undertaken. 
Dr.  T.  Sterry  Hunt,  of  Montreal,  supplied  us  in  1880  with 
the  following  brief  history  of  these  works. 

King  Louis  XV.  gave  a  royal  license  in  1730  to  a  company  to  work  the 
iron  ores  of  St.  Maurice  and  the  vicinity,  and  advanced  10,000  livres  for  aid 
in  erecting  the  furnace,  etc.  No  work  being  done  he  took  back  the  license, 
and  in  1735  granted  it  to  a  new  company,  which  received  100,000  livres  in 
aid  and  in  1737  built  a  blast  furnace.  In  1743,  however,  the  works  revert- 
ed to  the  crown,  and  were  worked  for  the  king's  profit.  *He  then  sent  out 
from  France  skilled  workmen,  who  rebuilt,  in  part  at  least,  the  blast  fur- 
nace as  it  now  stands,  and  ere'cted  a  Walloon  hearth,  which  is  still  in  use, 
for  refining.  The  works  became  the  property  of  the  British  Crown  at  the 
conquest,  and  were  at  first  rented  to  a  company  and  afterwards  sold. 
Smelting  has  been  carried  on  at  this  place  without  interruption  to  the 
present  time,  the  bog  ores  of  the  region  being  exclusively  used.  Three 
tons  of  ore  make  one  ton  of  iron. 

There  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  the  stack  is  the  one  built  in  1737,  and 
it  is  still  in  blast.  It  is  30  feet  high,  and  the  internal  diameter  at  the  hearth 
is  2J  feet,  at  the  boshes  7  feet,  and  at  the  throat  3£  feet.  There  are  two 
tuyeres,  and  the  blast  is  cold,  with  a  pressure  of  one  pound.  The  daily  pro- 
duction of  iron  is  four  tons,  and  the  consumption  of  charcoal  is  180  bush- 
els, (French,)  of  about  12  pounds  each,  per  ton  of  iron.  The  metal  was 
formerly  used  in  the  district  for  ordinary  castings,  but  is  now  in  great  de- 
mand for  car-wheels.  A  very  little  is,  however,  refined  in  the  Walloon 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  349 

hearth,  and  is  esteemed  by  the  blacksmiths  for  local  use.  The  analysis  of 
a  sample  of  the  gray  pig  of  St.  Maurice  made  by  me  in  1868  gave :  phos- 
phorus, .450  ;  silicon,  .860  ;  manganese,  1.240  ;  graphite,  2.820  ;  carbon  com- 
bined, 1.100. 

In  addition  to  the  above  information  we  find  some  facts 
of  interest  concerning  the  St.  Maurice  iron  works  in  Peter 
Kalm's  Travels  into  North  America,  written  in  1749. 

The  iron  work,  which  is  the  only  one  iri  this  country,  lies  three  miles 
to  the  west  of  Trois  Rivieres.  Here  are  two  great  forges,  besides  two  lesser 
ones  to  each  of  the  great  ones,  and  under  the  same  roof  with  them.  The 
bellows  wyere  made  of  wood,  and  everything  else  as  it  is  in  Swedish  forges. 
The  melting  ovens  stand  close  to  the  forges,  and  are  the  same  as  ours.  The 
ore  is  got  two  French  miles  and  a  half  from  the  iron  works,  and  is  carried 
thither  on  sledges.  It  is  a  kind  of  moor  ore,  which  lies  in  veins,  within  six 
inches  or  a  foot  from  the  surface  of  the  ground.  Each  vein  is  from  six  to 
eighteen  inches  deep,  and  below  it  is  a  white  sand.  The  veins  are  surround- 
ed with  this  sand  on  both  sides,  and  covered  at  the  top  with  a  thin  mould. 
The  ore  is  pretty  rich  and  lies  in  loose  lumps  in  the  veins,  of  the  size  of  two 
fists,  though  there  are  a  few  which  are  eighteen  inches  thick.  These  lumps 
are  full  of  holes,  which  are  filled  with  ochre.  The  ore  is  so  soft  that  it  may 
be  crushed  betwixt  the  fingers.  They  make  use  of  a  grey  limestone,  which 
is  broke  in  the  neighborhood,  for  promoting  the  fusibility  of  the  ore  ;  to 
that  purpose  they  likewise  employ  a  clay  marble,  which  is  found  near  this 
place.  Charcoals  are  to  be  had  in  great  abundance  here,  because  all  the 
country  round  this  place  is  covered  with  woods  which  have  never  been 
stirred.  The  charcoals  from  evergreen  trees,  that  is  from  the  fir  kind,  are 
best  for  the  forge,  but  those  of  deciduous  trees  are  best  for  the  smelting 
oven.  The  iron  which  is  here  made  was  to  me  described  as  soft,  pliable, 
and  tough,  and  is  said  to  have  the  quality  of  not  being  attacked  by  rust  so 
easily  as  other  iron ;  and  in  this  point  there  appears  a  great  difference  be- 
tween the  Spanish  iron  and  this  in  shipbuilding. 

This  iron  work  was  first  founded  in  1737,  by  private  persons,  who  after- 
wards ceded  it  to  the  king ;  they  cast  cannon  and  mortars  here,  of  different 
sizes,  iron  stoves,  which  are  in  use  all  over  Canada,  kettles,  etc.,  not  to  men- 
tion the  bars  which  are  made  here.  They  have  likewise  tried  to  make  steel 
here,  but  can  not  bring  it  to  any  great  perfection  because  they  are  unac- 
quainted with  the  manner  of  preparing  it. 

Mr.  Freed  says  thdt  the  French  company  which  establish- 
ed the  St.  Maurice  iron  works  in  1737  was  known  as  Ctignet  et 
Cie.  He  also  says  that  there  was  a  French  garrison  at  Three 
Rivers  at  the  time,  and  that  the  soldiers  were  the  principal 
workmen.  He  sends  us  a  fcopy  of  a  report  made  in  1752  to 
M.  Bigot,  Intendant  of  New  France,  residing  at  Quebec,  by 
M.  Franquet,  who  had  been  instructed  to  visit  and  examine 
the  St.  Maurice  works.  From  this  report  the  following  liberal 
extract  is  taken. 


350  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

On  entering  the  smelting  forge  I  was  received  with  a  customary  cer- 
emony ;  the  workmen  moulded  a  pig  of  iron  about  15  feet  long  for  my  es- 
pecial benefit.  The  process  is  very  simple :  it  is  done  by  plunging  a  large 
ladle  into  the  liquid-boiling  ore  and  emptying  the  material  into  a  gutter 
made  in  the  sand.  After  this  ceremony  I  was  shown  the  process  of  stove 
moulding,  which  is  also  a  very  simple  but  rather  intricate  operation.  Each 
stove  is  in  six  pieces,  which  are  separately  moulded ;  they  are  fitted  into 
each  other  and  form  a  stove  about  three  feet  high.  I  then  visited  a  shed 
wrhere  the  workmen  were  moulding  pots,  kettles,  and  other  hollow-ware. 
On  leaving  this  part  of  the  forge  we  were  taken  to  the  hammer  forge,  where 
bar  iron  of  every  kind  is  hammered  out.  In  each  department  of  the  forges 
the  workmen  observed  the  old  ceremony  of  brushing  a  stranger's  boots, 
and  in  return  they  expect  some  money  to  buy  liquor  to  drink  the  visitor's 
health.  The  establishment  is  very  extensive,  employing  upward  of  180 
men.  Nothing  is  consumed  in  the  furnaces  but  charcoal,  which  is  made  in 
the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  post.  The  ore  is  rich,  good,  and  tolerably 
clean.  Formerly  it  was  found  on  the  spot ;  now  the  director  has  to  send 
some  little  distance  for  it.  This  iron  is  preferred  to  the  Spanish  iron,Vnd 
is  sold  off  in  the  king's  stores  in  Quebec. 

In  1760  Canada  passed  into  the  possession  of  the  British 
Government,  and  with  it  the  St.  Maurice  forges.  For  nearly 
a  hundred  years  the  Crown  leased  these  works  to  various 
companies,  by  which  they  were  operated  with  more  or  less 
success. 

In  1815  the  St.  Maurice  works  were  still  in  active  oper- 
ation, as  we  learn  from  Joseph  Bouchette's  Lower  Canada. 
They  are  thus,  described :  "  The  establishment  is  furnished 
with  every  convenience  necessary  to  an  extensive  concern; 
the  furnaces,  the  forges,  the  founderies,  workshops,  etc.,  with 
houses  and  other  buildings,  present  the  appearance  of  a  tol- 
erably sized  village.  The  principal  articles  manufactured  are 
stoves  of  all  kinds  used  in  the  province,  large  potash  kettles, 
machines  for  mills,  and  various  kinds  of  cast  and  wrought 
iron ;  also  a  great  quantity  of  pig  and  bar  iron  for  exporta- 
tion. The  number  of  men  employed  fe  from  250  to  300." 

The  St.  Maurice  works  remained  in  the  ownership  of  the 
British  Government  until  1846,  when  they  were  sold  to 
Henry  Stuart.  A  report  to  the  Dominion  Parliament  in  1879 
says  that  they  were  then  owned  by  F.  McDougall  &  Son,  of 
Three  Rivers,  and  were  using  bog  ore  and  making  good  iron 
with  charcoal.  "  The  first  furnace  was  erected  in  1737 ;  still 
running ;  capacity  four  tons." 

In  a  valuable  paper  on  the  manufacture  of  iron  in  Can- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  351 

ada,  read  at  the  Halifax  meeting  of  the  American  Institute 
of  Mining  Engineers  in  September,  1885,  Mr.  James  Herbert 
Bartlett,  of  Montreal,  recorded  in  the  following  words  the  end 
of  the  long  career  of  the  blast  furnace  of  1737  which  was 
connected  with  the  St.  Maurice  forges :  "  The  property  is  now 
owned  by  George  McDougall,  of  Three  Rivers,  the  furnace 
having  been  in  blast  until  the  summer  of  1883,  when,  owing 
to  the  ore  and  fuel  becoming  exhausted,  it  was  finally  closed." 

At  the  time  of  its  abandonment  in  1883  the  St.  Maurice 
furnace  was  the  oldest  active  furnace  on  the  American  continent. 
In  that  year  there  were  still  standing  two  very  old  furnaces 
in  the  United  States — Oxford,  in  New  Jersey,  and  Cornwall, 
in  Pennsylvania,  both  built  in  1742,  but  neither  of  these  fur- 
naces was  in  blast  in  1883.  They  were  last  in  blast  in  1882. 
Since  that  year  Oxford  furnace  has  been  abandoned,  but 
Cornwall  is  still  standing  and  in  good  repair. 

Canada  has  had  a  few  other  iron  enterprises  and  a  few  steel 
works,  but  it  has  never  been  prominent  as  a  manufacturer 
of  either  iron  or  steel.  Of  late,  however,  much  interest  has 
been  taken  by  Canadians  in  the  development  of  the  iron  and 
steel  resources  of  the ,  Dominion,  and  in  this  movement  the 
people  of  the  United  States  will  heartily  sympathize. 


IT  would  not  be  profitable  to  give  such  fragmentary  in- 
formation as  is  at  our  command  concerning  the  very  small 
iron  industry  of  Mexico  and  Central  and  South  America. 


352  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


'  CHAPTER  XLI. 

THE    MANUFACTURE    OF    IRON    WITH    ANTHRACITE 
COAL  IN  THE   UNITED  STATES. 

THE  details  which  have  been  given  in  preceding  chapters 
of  the  early  ir.on  history  of  every  part  of  the  United  States 
relate  almost  entirely  to  the  manufacture  of  iron  with  char- 
coal as  fuel,  no  other  fuel  having  been  used  in  American 
blast  furnaces  until  about  1840,  and  but  little  use  of  any 
other  fuel  having  been  made  before  that  time  in  any  other 
branches  of  the  American  iron  industry.  The  period  of  our 
iron  history  prior  to  1840  may  therefore  very  properly  be 
styled  the  charcoal  era.  The  later  development  of  the  iron 
and  steel  industries  of  the  United  States  will  be  generally 
instead  of  provincially  or  geographically  treated  in  the  pres- 
ent chapter  and  in  succeeding  chapters. 

The  line  which  separates  the  charcoal  era  of  our  iron  his- 
tory from  the  era  which  succeeded  it,  and  which  may  be  said 
to  still  continue,  is  marked  by  the  almost  simultaneous  intro- 
duction of  anthracite  and  bituminous  coal  in  the  manufact- 
ure of  pig  iron.  This  innovation  at  once  caused  a  revolution 
in  the  whole  iron  industry  of  the  country.  Facilities  for  the 
manufacture  of  iron  were  increased;  districts  which  had  been 
partly  closed  to  this  industry  because  of  a  scarcity  of  timber 
for  the  supply  of  charcoal  were  now  fully  opened  to  it ;  and 
the  cheapening  of  prices,  which  was  made  possible  by  the 
increased  production  and  the  increased  competition,  served  to 
stimulate  consumption.  A  notable  result  of  the  introduction 
of  mineral  fuel  was  that,  while  it  restricted  the  production 
of  charcoal  pig  iron  in  the  States  which,  like  Pennsylvania, 
possessed  the  new  fuel,  it  did  not  injuriously  affect  the  pro- 
duction of  charcoal  pig  iron  in  other  States.  Some  of  these 
States,  notably  Michigan,  which  scarcely  possessed  an  iron  in- 
dustry of  any  kind  in  1840,  now  manufacture  large  quantities 
of  charcoal  pig  iron.  The  country  at  large  now  annually 
makes  more  charcoal  pig  iron  than  it  did  in  1840  or  in  any 
preceding  year.  Our  production  of  charcoal  pig  iron  in  1890 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  353 

was  the  largest  in  our  history.  The  introduction  of  mineral 
fuel  did  not,  therefore,  destroy  our  charcoal-iron  industry, 
but  simply  added  to  our  resources  for  the  production  of  iron. 
This  introduction,  however,  marked  such  radical  changes  in 
our  iron  industry,  and  so  enlarged  the  theatre  of  this  indus- 
try, that  we  are  amply  justified  in  referring  to  it  as  a  revolu- 
tion, and  as  one  which  ended  the  distinctive  charcoal  era. 

Of  the  two  forms  of  mineral  fuel,  anthracite  and  bitumi- 
nous coal,  anthracite  was  the  first  to  be  largely  used  in  Ameri- 
can blast  furnaces,  and  for  many  years  after  its  adaptability 
to  the  smelting  of  iron  ore  was  established  it  was  in  greater 
demand  for  this  purpose  than  bituminous  coal,  coked  or  un- 
coked.  In  recent  years  the  relative  popularity  of  these  two 
fuels  for  blast-furnace  use  has  been  exactly  reversed. 

The  natural  difficulties  in  the  way  of  the  successful  intro- 
duction of  anthracite  coal  in  our  blast  furnaces  were  increas- 
ed by  the  fact  that,  up  to  the  time  when  we  commenced  our 
experiments  in  its  use,  no  other  country  had  succeeded  in 
using  it  as  a  furnace  fuel.  We  had,  therefore,  no  other  guide 
in  its  use  than  our  own  unaided  intelligence.  The  successive 
steps  by  which  we  were  enabled  to  add  the  manufacture  of 
anthracite  pig  iron  to  that  of  charcoal  pig  iron  will  be  pre- 
sented in  chronological  order. 

In  the  suit  of  Farr  &  Kunzi  against  the  Schuylkill  Nav- 
igation Company  in  1840  Jesse  B.  Quinby  testified  that  in 
1815  he  used  anthracite  coal  for  a  short  time  at  Harford 
fufnace,  in  Maryland,  mixed  with  one-half  charcoal.  Between 
1824  and  1828  Peter  Bitner,  whose  brother,  Joseph  Bitner, 
was  afterwards  Governor  of  Pennsylvania,  was  successful  for 
a  short  time  in  using  anthracite  coal  mixed  with  charcoal  in 
a  charcoal  furnace  in  Perry  county,  Pennsylvania.  In  1826 
the  Lehigh  Coal  and  Navigation  Company  erected  at  Mauch 
Chunk,  in  Pennsylvania,  a  small  furnace  intended  to  use  an- 
thracite coal  in  smelting  iron  ore.  The  enterprise  was  not 
successful.  In  1827  unsuccessful  experiments  in  smelting 
iron  ore  with  anthracite  coal  from  Bhode  Island  were  made 
at  one  of  the  small  blast  furnaces  at  Kingston,  in  Plymouth 
county,  Massachusetts.  In  1827  and  1828  a  similar  failure 
in  the  use  of  anthracite  coal  took  place  at  Vizille,  in  France. 
These  experiments  failed  because  the  blast  used  was  cold. 


354  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

In  1828  James  B.  Neilson,  of  Scotland,  obtained  a  patent 
for  the  use  of  hot  air  in  the  smelting  of  iron  ore  in  blast 
furnaces,  and  in  1829  pig  iron  was  made  in  several  Scotch 
furnaces  with  the  apparatus  which  he  had  invented.  But  the 
coal  used  was  bituminous.  It  was  not  until  1837  that  the 
smelting  of  iron  ore  with  anthracite  coal  by  means  of  the 
hot-blast  invented  by  Neilson  was  undertaken  in  Great  Brit- 
ain. In  the  meantime  the  application  of  the  hot-blast  to 
anthracite  coal  in  American  furnaces  was  successfully  experi- 
mented with  by  an  enterprising  American  citizen,  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Frederick  W.  Geissenhainer,  a  Lutheran  clergyman  of 
New  York  city.  A  copy  in  his  own  handwriting  of  a  letter 
written  by  him  in  November,  1837,  to  the  Commissioner  of 
Patents  gives  some  interesting  and  valuable  details  concern- 
ing his  experiments.  In  this  letter,  which  we  have  lying 
before  us,  he  says :  "  I  can  prove  that,  in  the  month  of  De- 
cember, 1830,  and  in  the  months  of  January,  February,  and 
March,  1831,  I  had  already  invented  and  made  many  suc- 
cessful experiments,  as  well  with  hot  air  as  with  an  atmos- 
pheric air  blast,  to  smelt  iron  ore  with  anthracite  coal  in  my 
small  experimenting  furnace  here  in  the  city  of  New  York." 

On  the  5th  of  September,  1831,  Dr.  Geissenhainer  filed  in 
the  Patent  Office  at  Washington  an  account  of  his  invention, 
for  which  he  claimed  a  patent.  On  the  19th  of  December, 
1833,  a  patent  was  granted  to  him  for  "  a  new  and  useful  im- 
provement in  the  manufacture  of  iron  and  steel  by  the  ap- 
plication of  anthracite  coal."  From  the  long  and  remarkably 
clear  and  learned  specification  by  the  Doctor,  wrhich  accom- 
panied the  patent,  we  learn  that  he  discovered  that  iron  ore 
could  be  smelted  with  anthracite  coal  by  applying  "  a  blast, 
or  a  column,  or  a  stream,  or  current  of  air  in  or  of  such 
quantity,  velocity,  and  density  or  compression  as  the  com- 
pactness or  density  and  the  continuity  of  the  anthracite  coal 
requires.  The  blast  may  be  of  common  atmospheric  or  of 
heated  air.  Heated  air  I  should  prefer  in  an  economical  point 
of  view." 

The  Doctor  distinctly  disclaims  in  his  specification  "  an 
exclusive  right  of  the  use  of  heated  air  for  any  kind  of  fuel," 
from  which  it  is  to  be  inferred  that  he  had  full  knowledge  of 
Neilson's  experiments  with  hot  air  in  Scotland.  He  specif- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  355 

ically  claimed  as  his  invention  the  adaptability  of  anthracite 
coal  to  the  manufacture  of  iron  and  steel,  and  he  appears 
to  have  largely  relied  for  success  upon  the  effect  of  a  strong 
blast. 

The  patent  having  been  granted,  Dr.  Geissenhainer  pro- 
ceeded to  build  a  furnace  for  the  practical  application  of  his 
invention.  This  was  Valley  furnace,  located  on  Silver  creek, 
in  Schuylkill  county,  Pennsylvania,  about  ten  miles  northeast 
of  Pottsville..  In  August  and  September,  1836,  he  was  suc- 
cessful in  making  pig  iron  at  this  furnace  exclusively  with 
anthracite  coal  as  fuel.  His  own  testimony  on  this  point  is 
given  in  the  letter  from  which  we  have  already  quoted.  The 
blast  used  varied  from  3^  to  3J,  to  3,  and  to  2f  pounds  to  the 
square  inch.  That  the  furnace  did  not  continue  to  make 
iron  after  the  autumn  of  1836  is  explained  by  Dr.  Geissen- 
hainer to  have  been  due  to  an  accident  to  its  machinery.  He 
adds :  "  My  furnace  would  have  been  put  in  operation  again 
long  before  this  time  with  strong  iron  machinery,  and  a  hot- 
air  apparatus,  had  I  not  been  prevented  by  the  pressure  of  the 
times  and  by  a  protracted  severe  sickness  from  bestowing  my 
attention  to  this  matter.  The  drawings  for  the  iron  machin- 
ery and  for  the  hot-air  apparatus  are  already  in  the  hands 
of  Messrs.  Hay  wood  &  Snyder,  in  Pottsville,  who  are  to  do 
the  work."  The  blast  used  at  Valley  furnace  was  heated. 

The  quantity  of  pig  iron  made  at  Valley  furnace  is  not 
stated  by  the  Doctor.  It  probably  did  not  exceed  a  few  tons. 
Governor  Ritner  visited  the  furnace  on  July  30,  1836,  while 
the  Doctor's  experiments  were  in  progress.  In  the  Pottsville 
Miners'  Journal  for  August  6,  1836,  it  is  stated  that  speci- 
mens of  Dr.  Geissenhainer's  pig  iron  were  then  on  exhibi- 
tion at  Pennsylvania  Hall  in  Pottsville. 

Before  the  Doctor's  plans  for  improving  his  furnace  were 
completed  he  was  called  to  another  world.  He  died  at  New 
York  on  the  27th  of  May,  1838,  aged  66  years  and  11  months. 
He  was  born  at  Muhlberg,  in  the  Electorate  of  Saxony,  in 
1771,  and  came  to  this  country  when  he  was  about  18  years 
old.  His  remains  rest  in  the  family  burial  vault  in  the  Lu- 
theran cemetery,  in  Queens  county,  New  York. 

Prior  to  the  erection  of  Valley  furnace  Dr.  Geissenhainer 
had  been  engaged  in  the  development  of  the  iron  and  coal 


356  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

resources  of  Pennsylvania.  As  early  as  1811  he  was  associ- 
ated with  Peter  Karthaus,  of  Baltimore,  in  the  mining  of  bi- 
tuminous coal  in  Clearfield  county,  and  a  few  years  later  in 
the  ownership  of  a  charcoal  furnace  in  that  county.  For  two 
or  three  years  prior  to  1830  he  owned  and  operated  a  small 
charcoal  furnace  in  Schuylkill  county,  and  it  was  near  this 
furnace  that  he  afterwards  built  Valley  furnace.  Attached 
to  the  charcoal  furnace  was  a  puddling  furnace.  He  was  the 
pioneer  in  the  development  of  the  Silver  creek  anthracite 
coal  mines,  the  projector  of  the  Schuylkill  Valley  Railroad, 
and  the  sole  owner  of  the  Silver  Creek  Railroad.  Dr.  Geis- 
senhaiher  was,  as  has  been  seen,  a  man  of  great  enterprise. 
His  memory  as  the  first  manufacturer  of  pig  iron  with  an- 
thracite coal  and  the  hot-blast,  even  if  only  in  a  small  way, 
is  entitled  to  greater  honor  than  it  has  yet  received. 

On  the  28th  of  September,  1836,  when  Dr.  Geissenhainer's 
Valley  furnace  was  successfully  making  pig  iron,  and  almost 
three  years  after  the  Doctor  had  obtained  a  patent  for  his  in- 
vention, George  Crane,  the  owner  of  several  furnaces  at  Ynis- 
cedwin,  in  South  Wales,  obtained  a  patent  from  the  British 
Government  for  the  application  of  the  hot-blast  to  the  smelt- 
ing of  iron  ore  with  anthracite  coal.  On  the  7th  of  February, 
1837,  he  successfully  commenced  the  use  of  anthracite  with 
the  hot-blast  at  one  of  his  furnaces,  obtaining  36  tons  a  week. 
In  May  of  that  year  Solomon  W.  Roberts,  of  Philadelphia, 
visited  his  works  and  witnessed  the  complete  success  of  the 
experiment,  which  was  the  first  successful  experiment  with 
anthracite  coal  in  a  blast  furnace  in  Europe.  It  was  through 
Mr.  Roberts's  representations  to  his  uncle,  Josiah  White,  and 
to  Erskine  Hazard  and  others  that  the  first  successful  an- 
thracite furnace  in  the  Lehigh  valley  was  built  at  Catasau- 
qua  in  1839  and  1840  by  the  Lehigh  Crane  Iron  Company. 

Solomon  White  Roberts  was  born  in  Philadelphia  on  Au- 
gust 3,  1811,  and  died  in  the  same  city  on  March  22,  1882. 
He  is  buried  in  Woodlands  cemetery,  in  West  Philadelphia. 

Mr.  Crane  endeavored  to  obtain  a  patent  in  this  country 
for  his  application  of  the  hot-blast  to  anthracite  coal  in  the 
blast  furnace,  but  was  unsuccessful,  Dr.  Geissenhainer's  patent 
covering  the  same  principle.  The  Doctor's  patent,  which  was 
only  for  the  United  States,  was  sold  by  his  executors  in  1838 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  357   . 

to  Mr.  Crane,  who  in  November  of  that  year  patented  in  this 
country  some  additions  to  it.  The  patents  were  not  generally 
enforced  here,  but  Mr.  Crane  compelled  Welsh  ironmasters 
to  pay  him  for  the  use  of  his  invention.  Dr.  Geissenhainer 
never  attempted  to  enforce  his  patent.  The  consideration 
which  his  executors  received  from .  Mr.  Crane  was  $1,000 
and  the  privilege  of  erecting,  free  of  royalty,  fifteen  furnaces 
for  the  use  of  anthracite  coal  with  the  hot-blast.  The  follow- 
ing advertisement  by  Mr.  Crane's  agents  in  this  country  we 
take  from  a  Philadelphia  newspaper  published  in  December, 
1839,  over  fifty  years  ago. 

ANTHRACITE  IRON. — The  subscribers,  agents  of  George  Crane,  Esq.,  are 
prepared  to  grant  licenses  for  the  manufacture  of  iron  with  anthracite  coal, 
under  the  patent  granted  to  Mr.  Crane  by  the  United  States,  for  smelting 
iron  with  the  above  fuel,  in  addition  to  which  Mr.  Crane  holds  an  assign- 
ment of  so  much  of  the  patent  granted  to  the  late  Reverend  Dr.  Geissen- 
hainer as  pertains  to  making  iron  with  anthracite  coal.  The  charge  will  be 
25  cents  per  ton  on  all  thus  manufactured.  It  has  been  completely  success- 
ful both  in  Wales  and  at  Pottsville,  one  furnace  at  the  latter  place  yielding 
an  average  product  of  40  tons  per  week  of  excellent  iron.  All  persons  are 
cautioned  against  infringing  upon  either  of  the  above  patents.  Any  appli- 
cation of  hot-blast  in  the  smelting  of  iron  ore  with  anthracite  coal,  without 
a  license,  will  be  an  infringement,  and  will  be  treated  accordingly. 
Apply  to  A.  G.  RALSTON  &  Co., 

dec  9 — 1m  4  South  Front  st. 

We  shall  refer  hereafter  to  the  furnace  at  Pottsville  which 
had  made  "40  tons  per  week"  with  anthracite  coal. 

George  Crane  was  born  about  1784  at  Bromsgrove,  in  Wor- 
cestershire, England,  whence  he  removed  in  1824  to  Wales. 
He  died  on  the  10th  of  January,  1846,  in  the  62d  year  of  his 
age.  An  obituary  notice  of  Mr.  Crane,  written  by  Solomon 
W.  Roberts,  is  printed  in  the  Journal  of  the  Franklin  Institute 
for  March,  1846. 

Two  interesting  experiments  in  the  use  of  anthracite  coal 
in  the  blast  furnace  were  made  in  this  country  about  the 
time  when  Dr.  Geissenhainer  succeeded  with  his  experiment 
at  Valley  furnace.  In  1836  and  1837  John  Pott  experimented 
at  Manheim  furnace,  at  Cressona,  in  Schuylkill  county,  with 
anthracite  coal  as  a  fuel  for  smelting  iron  ore.  He  first  used 
a  mixture  of  anthracite  -coal  and  charcoal  with  cold-blast. 
The  results  accomplished  were  so  encouraging  that  he  added 
a  hot-blast  and  gradually  reduced  the  proportion  of  charcoal 


358  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

until  only  anthracite  was  used.  This  he  used  alone  and  suc- 
cessfully for  a  short  time.  But  the  blast  was  too  weak,  and 
the  furnace  was  not  long  in  operation.  Before  the  necessary 
improvements  could  be  made  it  was  destroyed  by  a  freshet. 
In  1837  Jarvis  Van  Buren,  acting  for  a  company,  built  a  fur- 
nace at  South  Easton,  m  Northampton  county,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  experimenting  with  anthracite  coal.  Early  in  1838 
he  was  successful  in  making  20  tons  of  pig  iron,  when  further 
operations  were  stopped  because  the  blast  was  too  weak.  We 
are  not  informed  whether  it  was  hot  or  cold. 

It  is  claimed  that  a  successful  experiment  in  the  manu- 
facture of  pig  iron  with  anthracite  coal  was  made  in  1837  by 
a  Mr.  Bryant  in  a  foundry  cupola  at  Manayunk,  near  Phila- 
delphia. The  blast  used  was  produced  by  "  wooden  bellows." 
A  few  tons  of  the  iron  made  were  used  by  Parke  &  Tiers, 
the  owners  of  the  foundry,  "  and  proved  to  be  of  good  gray 
quality  and  of  uncommon  strength."  The  experiment  was 
conducted  under  the  auspices  of  this  firm  and  of  Mr.  Abra- 
ham Kunzi,  of  the  firm  of  Farr  &  Kunzi,  manufacturing 
chemists,  of  Philadelphia.  The  blast  was  cold. 

The  record  which  we  shall  now  give  of  the  successful  use 
of  anthracite  coal  in  American  furnaces,  after  Dr.  Geissen- 
hainer  and  George  Crane  had  established  the  practicability 
of  such  use,  will  embrace  only  a  few  of  the  early  anthracite 
furnaces,  and  this  we  condense  from  Walter  R.  Johnson's 
Notes  on  the  Use  of  Anthracite,  published  in  1841,  and  from 
William  Firmstone's  "  Sketch  of  Early  Anthracite  Furnaces," 
published  in  the  third  volume  of  the  Transactions  of  the  Amer- 
ican Institute  of  Mining  Engineers.  In  each  of  the  instances  to 
be  referred  to,  all  in  Pennsylvania,  the  blast  used  was  heated. 

Late  in  1837  Joseph  Baughman,  Julius  Guiteau,  and  Hen- 
ry High,  of  Reading,  experimented  in  smelting  iron  ore  with 
anthracite  coal  in  the  old  furnace  of  the  Lehigh  Coal  and 
Navigation  Company  at  Mauch  Chunk,  using  about  80  per 
cent,  of  anthracite.  The  results  were  so  encouraging  that 
they  built  a  small  water-power  furnace  near  the  weigh-lock 
at  Mauch  Chunk,  which  was  completed  in  July,  1838.  Blast 
was  applied  to  this  furnace  on  August  27th  and  discontinued 
on  September  10th,  the  temperature  being  heated  to  about 
200°  Fahrenheit.  The  fuel  used  was  mainly  but  not  entirely 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  359 

anthracite.  A  new  heating  apparatus  was  procured,  placed  in 
a  brick  chamber  at  the  tunnel-head,  and  heated  by  the  flame 
therefrom.  Blast  was  applied  in  November,  1838,  the  fuel 
used  being  anthracite  exclusively,  and  athe  furnace  worked 
remarkably  well  for  five  weeks  "  to  January  12,  1839,  when 
it  was  blown  out  for  want  of  ore.  Some  improvements  were 
made,  and  on  July  26,  1839,  the  furnace  wras  again  put  in 
blast,  and  so  continued  until  November  2,  1839.  Francis  C. 
Lowthorp,  of  Trenton,  was  one  of  the  partners  at  this  time. 
For  "  about  three  months  "  no  other  fuel  than  anthracite  was 
used,  the  temperature  of  the  blast  being  from  400°  to  600°. 
About  100  tons  of  iron  were  made.  Mr.  Lowthorp  died  at 
Trenton  on  June  1, 1890,  aged  81  years. 

The  next  furnace  to  use  anthracite  was  the  Pioneer,  built 
in  1838  and  1839  at  Pottsville  by  William  Lyman,  of  Boston, 
under  the  auspices  of  Burd  Patterson,  an  enterprising  citizen 
of  Pottsville,  who  inaugurated  the  enterprise.  Until  1844 
Pioneer  furnace  was  called  Pottsville.  Blast  was  unsuccess- 
fully applied  on  July  10,  1839.  Benjamin  Perry  then  took 
charge  of  the  furnace,  and  blew  it  in  on  October  19,  1839, 
with  perfect  success.  This  furnace  was  blown  by  steam-pow- 
er. The  blast  was  heated  with  anthracite,  in  ovens  at  the 
base  of  the  furnace,  to  a  temperature  of  600°.  The  product 
was  about  28  tons  a  week  of  good  foundry  iron.  This  fur- 
nace continued  in  blast  for  some  time.  A  large  premium 
was  paid  by  Nicholas  Biddle  and  others  to  Mr.  Lyman  as  the 
first  person  in  the  United  States  who  had  made  anthracite 
pig  iron  continuously  for  three  months.  On  January  18th, 
1840,  a  dinner  was  given  to  Mr.  Lyman  at  Pottsville  in  hon- 
or of  the  important  event,  at  which  a  notable  address  was 
delivered  by  Mr.  Biddle.  Pioneer  furnace  was  practically 
rebuilt  in  1853,  torn  down  in  1866,  and  again  rebuilt.  In 
April,  1888,  the  hot-blast  fell  down,  and  the  furnace  was  torn 
down  in  1889  and  a  new  furnace  built  in  its  stead.  Other 
furnaces  and  a  large  rolling  mill  and  steel  works,  owned  by 
the  Pottsville  Iron  and  Steel  Company,  have  been  added  to 
the  original  furnace  and  its  successors. 

We  have  before  us  the  original  agreement  between  Rob- 
ert Ralston,  attorney  in  fact  for  George  Crane,  and  William 
Lyman,  which  conveyed  to  the  latter  a  license  to  use  Crane 


360  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

and  Geissenhainer's  patents  for  the  use  of  anthracite  coal  in 
the  manufacture  of  pig  iron.  It  is  dated  at  Philadelphia, 
on  December  4, 1839,  and  the  consideration  named  is  twenty- 
five  cents  per  ton  of  pig  iron  made. 

Danville  furnace,  in  Montour  county,  was  successfully 
blown  in  with  anthracite  in  April,  1840,  producing  35  tons 
of  pig  iron  weekly  with  steam-power.  Roaring  Creek  furnace, 
in  Montour  county,  was  next  blown  in  with  anthracite  on 
May  18,  1840,  and  produced  40  tons  of  pig  iron  weekly  with 
water-power. 

A  charcoal  furnace  at  Phcenixville,  built  in  1837  by 
Reeves,  Buck  &  Co.,  was  blown  in  with  anthracite  on  June 
17, 1840,  by  William  Firmstone,  and  produced  from  28  to  30 
tons  of  pig  iron  weekly  with  water-power.  The  hot-blast 
stove,  which  was  planned  and  erected  by  Julius  Guiteau,  of 
the  Mauch  Chunk  furnace,  was  situated  on  one  side  of  the 
tunnel-head  and  heated  by  the  flame  of  the  furnace.  This 
furnace  continued  in  blast  until  1841. 

Columbia  furnace,  at  Danville,  was  blown  in  with  anthra- 
cite by  Mr.  Perry  on  July  2,  1840,  and  made  from  30  to  32 
tons  of  pig  iron  weekly,  using  steam-power. 

The  next  furnace  to  use  anthracite,  and  the  last  one  we 
shall  mention,  was  built  at  Catasauqua,  for  the  Lehigh  Crane 
Iron  Company,  in  1839,  by  David  Thomas,  who  had  been 
associated  with  Mr.  Crane  in  his  experiments  at  Yniscedwin, 
and  had  there  been  successful  in  making  anthracite  pig  iron. 
This  furnace  was  blown  in  by  Mr.  Thomas  on  July  3, 1840, 
and  its  first  cast  was  made  on  July  4th.  From  the  first  this 
furnace  produced  50  tons  a  week  of  good  foundry  iron,  wa- 
ter-power from  the  Lehigh  being  used.  The  furnace  was  in 
active  use  until  1879,  when  it  was  torn  down.  Mr.  Firmstone 
says  that  "with  the  erection  of  this  furnace  commenced  the 
era  of  higher  and  larger  furnaces  and  better  blast  machinery, 
with  consequent  improvements  in  yield  and  quality  of  iron 
produced."  Four  other  furnaces  built  by  Mr.  Thomas  for  the 
same  company  at  Catasauqua  soon  followed  the  first  furnace, 
one  built  in  1842,  another  in  1846,  and  two  in  1850.  In  all 
Mr.  Thomas  built  five  furnaces  for  the  Lehigh  Crane  Iron 
Company.  The  prefix  "  Lehigh "  was  dropped  in  1872. 

In  a  memoir  of  Josiah  White,  by  his   son-in-law,  Rich- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  361 

ard  Richardson,  we  find  the  following  statement :  "  In  1838 
Erskine  Hazard  went  to  Wales,  and  there  made  himself  ac- 
quainted with  the  process  and  manner  of  making  the  anthra- 
cite iron,  with  the  machinery  and  buildings  needful  for  its 
manufacture.  He  ordered  such  machinery  as  was  necessary 
to  be  made  for  the  company,  under  the  direction  of  George 
Crane,  the  inventor,  and  engaged  David  Thomas,  who  was  fa- 
miliar with  the  process,  to  take  charge  of  the  erection  of  the 
works  and  the  manufacture  of  the  iron.  He  arrived  in  the 
summer  of  1839,  and  to  his  faithful  and  intelligent  manage- 
ment much  of  the  success  of  the  enterprise  is  due."  We  do 
not  hesitate  to  say  that  to  Mr.  Thomas's  management  was 
due  the  whole  of  the  success  of  the  anthracite  furnaces  built 
by  the  Lehigh  Crane  Iron  Company. 

David  Thomas  was  born  on  November  3, 1794,  at  a  place 
called,  in  English,  Grey  House,  within  two  and  a  half  miles 
of  the  town  of  Neath,  in  the  county  of  Glamorgan,  South 
Wales.  He  landed  in  the  United  States  on  June  5, 1839,  and 
on  July  9th  of  that  year  he  commenced  to  build  the  furnace 
at  Catasauqua.  He  died  at  Catasauqua  on  June  20,  1882,  in 
his  88th  year.  At  the  time  of  his  death  he  was  the  oldest 
ironmaster  in  the  United  States  in  length  of  service,  and  he 
was  next  to  Peter  Cooper  the  oldest  in  years.  David  Thom- 
as's character  and  services  to  the  American  iron  trade  are 
held  in  high  honor  by  all  American  iron  and  steel  manufact- 
urers. He  is  affectionately  styled  the  Father  of  the  Ameri- 
can anthracite  iron  industry,  because  the  furnace  built  under 
his  directions  at  Catasauqua  and  blown  in  by  him  was  the 
first  of  all  the  early  anthracite  furnaces  that  was  complete- 
ly successful,  both  from  an  engineering  and  a  commercial 
standpoint,  and  also  because  he  subsequently  became  identi- 
fied with  the  manufacture  of  anthracite  pig  iron  on  a  more 
extensive  scale  than  any  of  his  cotemporaries.  He  was  the 
founder  of  the  Thomas  Iron  Company,  at  Hokendauqua, 
which  has  long  been  at  the  head  of  the  producers  of  anthra- 
cite pig  iron.  The  first  two  furnaces  of  this  company  were 
built  by  Mr.  Thomas  in  1855.  An  obituary  notice,  of  Mr. 
Thomas  will  be  found  in  The  Bulletin  of  The  American  Iron 
and  Steel  Association  for  June  28,  1882.  '  William  Cullen  Bry- 
ant and  David  Thomas  were  born  on  the  same  day. 


362  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Mr.  Thomas's  three  sons,  John,  Samuel,  and  David,  all  be- 
came identified  with  their  father's  occupation  and  enterprises. 
John  and  Samuel  have  been  and  still  are  among  the  most 
prominent  of  our  pig-iron  manufacturers.  David  was  killed 
while  the  Hokendauqua  furnaces  were  under  construction. 

In  1835  the  Franklin  Institute,  of  Philadelphia,  offered  a 
premium  of  a  gold  medal  "to  the  person  who  shall  manu- 
facture in  the  United  States  the  greatest  quantity  of  iron  from 
the  ore  during  the  year,  using  no  other  fuel  than  anthracite 
coal,  the  quantity  to  be  riot  less  than  twenty  tons,"  but  we 
can  not  learn  that  the  medal  was  ever  awarded  to  any  of  the 
persons  who  were  instrumental  in  establishing  the  manufact- 
ure of  anthracite  pig  iron  in  this  country.  The  offer  of  the 
medal  proves  that  down  to  1835  all  efforts  to  manufacture 
pig  iron  with  anthracite  coal  had  been  unsuccessful. 

The  discovery  that  anthracite  coal  could  be  successfully 
used  in  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron  gave  a  fresh  impetus  to 
the  iron  industry  in  New  York,  New  Jersey,  and  Maryland, 
as  well  as  in  Pennsylvania.  In  1840  there  were  qnjy._sisjur-i 
naces  in  the  United  States  which  used  anthracite  coal,  and 
they  were  all  in  Pennsylvania.  The  first  anthracite  furnace 
outside  of  Pennsylvania  was  built  at  Stanhope,  New  Jersey, 
in  1840  and  1841,  by  the  Stanhope  Iron  Company,  and  it 
was  successfully  blown  in  on  April  5,  1841.  On  the  1st  of 
April,  1846,  there  were  forty-two  furnaces  in  Pennsylvania 
and  New  Jersey  which  used  anthracite  coal  as  fuel,  their 
annual  capacity  being  122,720  tons.  In  1856  there  were  121 
anthracite  furnaces  in  the  country  which  were  either  "run- 
ning or  in  running  order " — ninety-three  in  Pennsylvania, 
fourteen  in  New  York,  six  in  Maryland,  four  in  New  Jersey, 
three  in  Massachusetts,  and  one  in  Connecticut.  These  fig- 
ures show  rapid  progress  in  building  up  in  a  brief  period 
a  new  branch  of  the  American  iron  industry.  •  Soon  after 
1856  many  other  furnaces  were  built  to  use  the  new  fuel. 

Although  the  revolution  to  which  we  have  referred  prop- 
erly dates  from  the  first  successful  use  of  anthracite  coal  in 
the  blast  furnace  the  new  fuel  had  previously  been  used  in 
a  small  way  in  this  country  in  other  ironmaking  operations. 
Its  use  in  these  operations  became  general  about  the  time 
when  pig  iron  was  first  made  with  it. 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  363 

To  encourage  the  use  of  anthracite  coal  the  Lehigh  Coal 
Mine  Company  executed,  on  the  18th  of  December,  1807, 
a  lease  for  twenty-one  years  to  James  Butland  and  James 
Rowland  of  two  hundred  acres  of  its  land  in  Northampton 
county,  Pennsylvania,  with  the  privilege  of  digging  iron  ore 
and  coal  free  for  the  manufacture  of  iron.  The  enterprise 
was  unfruitful  and  the  lease  was  abandoned  about  1814.  No 
iron  was  made  and  we  think  that  no  coal  was  mined.  The 
following  extract  from  the  proposition  of  Butland  &  Rowland, 
dated  November  30,  1807,  is  worthy  of  preservation  :  "  The 
subscribers,  having  obtained  by  patent  from  the  United 
States  an  exclusive  right  of  using  a  natural  carbon  or  pecu- 
liar kind  of  coal,  such  as  is  found  in  the  neighborhood  of 
the  Lehigh  and  Susquehanna  rivers,  and  other  parts  of  the 
United  States,  for  the  purpose  of  manufacturing  pig,  cast, 
and  bar  iron,  propose  commencing  the  operation  in  such  a 
situation  as  may  be  deemed  best  adapted  to  the  purpose." 

The  first  use  of  anthracite  coal  in  connection  with  the 
manufacture  of-  iron  in  the  United  States  dates  from  1812, 
in  Avliicli  year  Colonel  George  Shoemaker,  of  Pottsville,  Penn- 
sylvania, loaded  nine  wagons  with  coal  from  his  mines  at 
Centreville  and  hauled  it  to  Philadelphia,  where  with  great 
difficulty  he  sold  two  loads  at  the  cost  of  transportation  and 
gave  the  other  seven  loads  away.  He  was  by  many  regarded 
as  an  impostor  for  attempting  to  sell  stone  to  the  public  as 
coal.  Of  the  two  loads  sold  one  was  purchased  by  White  & 
Hazard,  for  use  at  their  wire  works  at  the  Falls  of  Schuyl- 
kill,  and  the  other  was  purchased  by  Malin  &  Bishop,  for 
use  at  the  Delaware  County  rolling  mill.  By  the  merest  ac- 
cident of  closing  the  furnace  doors  Mr.  White  obtained  a  hot 
fire  from  the  coal,  and  from  this  occurrence,  happening  in 
1812,  we  may  date  the  first  successful  use  of  anthracite  coal 
in  the  manufacture  of  iron  in  this  country  and  in  the  man- 
ufacture of  other  American  products.  At  both  the  establish- 
ments mentioned  it  was  used  in  heating  furnaces.  Previous 
to  this  time  bituminous  coal  from  Virginia  and  Great  Brit- 
ain had  been  relied  upon  for  manufacturing  purposes  in  the 
Atlantic  States  in  all  cases  where  wood  was  not  used.  The 
war  of  1812  prevented  the  importation  of  British  coal  and 
interfered  with  the  supply  of  Virginia  coal,  and  there  were 


364  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

as  yet  no  means  of  communication  with  the  bituminous  coal 
fields  of  Western  Pennsylvania  or  Western  Maryland.  The 
firm  of  White  &  Hazard  was  composed  of  Josiah  White  and 
Erskine  Hazard. 

In  the  latter  part  of  1823  the  Boston  Iron  Company,  own- 
ing the  Boston  iron  works,  obtained  a  full  cargo  of  Lehigh 
anthracite -coal  for  use  in  heating  iron  to  be  rolled  in  its  mill 
and  for  smith-work.  A  short  time  previous  to  this  transac- 
tion, but  in  the  same  year,  Cyrus  Alger,  of  South  Boston, 
obtained  a  lot  of  about  thirty  tons  of  Lehigh  coal,  which  he 
used  in  a  cupola  for  melting  iron  for  castings. 

Anthracite  coal  for  the  generation  of  steam  was  first  used 
in  this  country  in  January,  1825,  under  the  boilers  of  the 
rolling  mill  at  Phoenix ville,  of  which  Jonah  and  George 
Thompson,  of  Philadelphia,  were  the  proprietors.  It  is  also 
claimed  that,  two  years  later,  in  1827,  the  first  use  of  anthra- 
cite coal  in  the  puddling  furnace  in  this  country  was  made 
at  the  same  rolling  mill,  Jonah  and  George  Thompson  still 
being  the  proprietors.  It  is  stated  that  anthracite  coal  was 
used  in  1834  in  puddling  at  a  rolling  mill  at  Pottsville, 
owned  by  Buckley  &  Swift.  But  the  use  of  anthracite  coal 
for  puddling  did  not  become  general  until  about  1840.  In 
1839  it  was  used  in  puddling  at  the  Boston  iron  works  by 
Ralph  Crooker,  the  superintendent.  About  1836  Thomas  and 
Peter  Cooper,  brothers,  used  anthracite  in  a  heating  furnace 
at  their  rolling  mill  on  Thirty-third  street,  near  Third  ave- 
nue, New  York,  and  about  1840  they  began  puddling  with 
anthracite.  In  April,  1846,  there  were  twenty-seven  rolling 
mills  in  Pennsylvania  and  New  Jersey  which  were  using  an- 
thracite coal  in  puddling  and  heating  furnaces  as  well  as  in 
producing  steam. 

The  following  notice  of  the  success  of  the  Messrs.  Thomp- 
son in  the  use  of  anthracite  coal  for  the  production  of  steam 
appeared  in  1825  in  a  newspaper  published  at  West  Chester, 
Pennsylvania :  "  We  understand  that  the  Messrs.  Thompson, 
at  the  Phoenix  nail  works,  on  French  creek,  have  fully  suc- 
ceeded in  constructing  a  furnace  for  a  steam  engine  calcula- 
ted' for  the  use  of  anthracite  coal,  and  in  discovering  a  mode 
by  which  this  fuel  may  be  most  advantageously  applied  to 
that  important  purpose.  We  would  heartily  congratulate  the 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  365 

eastern  section  of  our  State  upon  this  valuable  discovery. 
Nothing  within  our  knowledge  has  occurred  of  recent  date 
which  can  have  a  more  auspicious  influence  upon  our  man- 
ufacturing interests." 

We  may  properly  close  this  chapter  and  introduce  its 
successor  by  quoting  the  following  extract  from  the  letter  of 
instructions  addressed  to  its  European  agent,  William  Strick- 
land, by  the  Acting  Committee  of  the  Pennsylvania  Society 
for  the  Promotion  of  Internal  Improvement.  This  letter  is 
dated  at  Philadelphia,  March  18,  1825.  In  speaking  of  the 
manufacture  of  iron  in  Pennsylvania,  and  the  necessity  of 
enlarging  it  by  the  adoption  of  European  methods,  the  com- 
mittee says': 

"  No  improvements  have  been  made  here  in  it  within  the 
last  thirty  years,  and  the  use  of  bituminuous  and  anthracite  coal 
in  our  furnaces  is  absolutely  and  entirely  unknoivn.  Attempts, 
and  of  the  most  costly  kind,  have  been  made  to  use  the  coal 
of  the  western  part  of  our  State  in  the  production  of  iron. 
Furnaces  have  been  constructed  according  to  the  plan  said  to 
be  adopted  in  Wales  and  elsewhere ;  persons  claiming  expe- 
rience in  the  business  have  been  employed ;  but  all  has  been 
unsuccessful." 


366  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER   XLIL 

THE    MANUFACTURE    OF    IRON    WITH    BITUMINOUS 
COAL  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

IT  is  remarkable  that  the  introduction  of  bituminous  coal 
in  the  blast  furnaces  of  this  country  should  have  taken  place 
at  so  late  a  day  in  our  history  and  within  the  memory  of  men 
who  are  not  yet  old.  Bituminous  coal  had  been  discovered 
in  the  United  States  long  before  any  attempt  wras  made  to 
use  it  in  our  furnaces,  and  Great  Britain  had  taught  us  while 
we  were  still  her  colonies  that  it  could  be  so  used.  IixJLZ35 
Abraham  Darby,  at  his  furnace  at  Coalbrookdale,  in  Shrop- 
shire, ha3  successfully  made  pig  iron  with  coke  as  fuel ;  in 
1740  a  coke  furnace  was  built  at  Pontypool,  in  Monmouth- 
shire ;  and  in  1796  charcoal  furnaces  had  been  almost  entire- 
ly abandoned  in  Great  Britain.  Our  delay  in  following  the 
example  of  the  mother  country  may  be  variously  explained. 
There  was  a  lack  of  transportation  facilities  for  bringing  iron 
ore  and  coke  together  ;  not  all  of  the  bituminous  coal  that 
had  been  discovered  was  suitable  for  making  coke ;  the  man- 
ufacture of  coke  was  not  well  understood ;  the  country  had 
an  abundance  of  timber  for  the  supply  of  charcoal;  and, 
finally,  a  prejudice  existed  in  favor  of  charcoal  pig  iron  and 
of  bar  iron  hammered  in  charcoal  forges.  It  was  not  until 
about  1840  that  successful  efforts  were  made  to  introduce  the 
use  of  bituminous  coal  in  American  blast  furnaces,  but  its 
use  made  slow  progress  for  many  years,  the  principal  reason 
being  the  poor  quality  of  the  coke  that  was  made.  Our  best 
coking  fields  had  not  been  developed.  As  late  as  1849  Over- 
man, in  his  Manufacture  of  Iron,  in  treating  of  coke  furnaces 
in  the  United  States,  said  :  "  As  there  is  but  little  prospect 
of  an  addition  to  the  number  of  coke  furnaces  which  now 
exist  we  shall  devote  but  a  limited  space  to  this  subject." 

The  successful  introduction  of  bituminous,  coal  as  a  fuel 
in  American  blast  furnaces  was  naturally  preceded  by  many 
experiments  in  its  use,  which  were  attended  with  varied  suc- 
cess, but  none  of  them  with  complete  success.  It  appears  to 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  367 

be  mathematically  certain  that  down  to  1835  all  of  these  ex- 
periments had  been  unsuccessful,  as  in  that  year  the  Franklin 
Institute,  of  Philadelphia,  offered  a  premium  of  a  gold  medal 
"  to  the  person  who  shall  manufacture  in  the  United  States 
the  greatest  quantity  of  iron  from  the  ore  during  the  year, 
using  no  other  fuel  than  bituminous  coal  or  coke,  the  quan- 
tity to  be  not  less  than  twenty  tons."  The  Institute  would 
not  have  been  likely  to  make  this  offer  if  even  so  small  a 
quantity  as  twenty  tons  of  pig  iron  had  been  made  in  one 
furnace  with  bituminous  coal,  either  coked  or  uncoked. 

The  earliest  experiment  in  the  United  States  in  the  man- 
ufacture of  pig  iron  with  bituminous  coal  that  appears  to  be 
fully  authenticated  was  made  at  Bear  Creek  furnace,  in  Arm- 
strong county,  Pennsylvania,  in  1819.  This  furnace  was  built 
to  use  coke,  with  steam-power,  and  in  the  year  named  it  was 
blown  in  with  this  fuel,  but  the  blast  was  cold  and  too  weak 
and  the  furnace  chilled  after  two  or  three  tons  of  iron  had 
been  made.  Charcoal  was  then  substituted. 

In  a  report  by  a  committee  of  the  Senate  of  Pennsylvania, 
of  which  Hon.  S.  J.  Packer  was  chairman,  read  in  the  Senate 
on  March  4,  1834,  it  was  stated  that  "  the  coking  process  is 
now  understood,  and  our  bituminous  coal  is  quite  as  suscep- 
tible of  this  operation,  and  produces  as  good  coke,  as  that 
of  Great  Britain.  It  is  now  used  to  a  considerable  extent  by 
our  iron  manufacturers  in  Centre  county  and  elsewhere."  It 
is  certain  that,  at  the  time  this  report  was  written,  coke  could 
not  have  been  used  in  blast  furnaces  in  any  other  way  than 
as  a  mixture  with  charcoal,  except  experimentally.  Its  use 
as  a  mixture  with  charcoal  would  naturally  precede  its  sole 
use  as  a  blast-furnace  fuel.  Mr.  Packer  doubtless  also  had 
in  mind  the  use  of  coke  in  melting  pig  iron  in  "  run-out " 
or  "  finery  "  fires  preparatory  to  converting  it  into  blooms 
or  bars  in  charcoal  forges.  We  have  elsewhere  referred  to 
the  use  of  coke  in  a  refinery  at  Plumsock,  in  Fayette  county, 
Pennsylvania,  as  early  as  1817. 

The  offer  of  the  gold  medal  by  the  Franklin  Institute 
doubtless  assisted  in  stimulating  action  upon  a  subject  which 
had  already  attracted  much  attention.  In  the  year  in  which 
this  offer  was  made,  1835,  that  accomplished  furnace  mana- 
ger, William  Firmstone,  was  successful  in  making  good  gray 


368  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

forge  iron  for  about  one  month  at  the  end  of  a  blast  at  Mary 
Ann  furnace,  in  Huntingdon  county,  Pennsylvania,  with  coke 
made  from  Broad  Top  coal.  This  iron  was  taken  to  a  forge 
three  miles  distant  and  made  into  blooms.  The  coke  used 
at  the  furnace  was  not  prepared  to  be  so  used,  but  had  been 
made  for  use  in  the  "  run-out "  fires  at  the  forge  connected 
with  the  furnace.  Mr.  Firmstone  did  not  claim  the  medal. 
He  may  not  have  known  that  a  premium  had  been  offered 
for  the  achievement  which  he  undoubtedly  accomplished. 

In  a  pamphlet  published  in  April,  1836,  Isaac  Fisher,  of 
Lewistown,  Pennsylvania,  stated  that  "  successful  experiments 
have  lately  been  tried  in  Pennsylvania  in  making  pig  iron 
with  coke."  It  is  probable  that  Mr.  Fisher  had  in  mind  Mr. 
Firmstone 's  experiment  at  Mary  Ann  furnace. 

William  Firmstone  was  born  at  Wellington,  in  Shropshire, 
England,  on  October '19,  1810.  When  quite  a  young  man  he 
was  manager  at  the  Lays  works,  near  Dudley,  which  were 
then  owned  by  his  uncles,  W.  &.  G.  Firmstone.  In  the  spring 
of  1835  he  emigrated  to  the  United  States.  After  filling  many 
responsible  positions  in  connection  with  the  manufacture  of 
pig  iron  in  his  adopted  country  he  died  at  his  residence  near 
Easton,  Pennsylvania,  on  September  11,  1877,  and  is  buried 
at  that  place.  He  was  one  of  the  first  to  introduce  the  hot- 
blast  in  the  United  States,  having  successfully^  added  this 
improvement  to  Vesuvius  furnace,  in  Lawrence  county,  Ohio, 
in  1836.  In  1839  he  added  a  hot-blast  to  Karthaus  furnace, 
in  Pennsylvania. 

About  1837  F.  H.  Oliphant,  a  skillful  ironmaster,  made 
at  his  furnace  called  Fairchance,  near  Uniontown,  in  Fayette 
county,  Pennsylvania,  a  quantity  of  coke  pig  iron  exceeding 
twenty  tons,  and  probably  exceeding  100  tons.  He  did  not, 
however,  long  continue  to  make  coke  iron,  and  resumed  the 
manufacture  of  iron  with  charcoal.  Mr.  Oliphant  had  heard 
of  the  offer  of  the  gold  medal,  and  in  a  letter  to  the  Institute, 
dated  October  3,  1837,  he  modestly  referred  to  his  success  in 
making  pig  iron  with  coke,  and  suggested  that  possibly  he 
was  entitled  to  the  premium.  Accompanying  his  letter  was 
a  box  of  pig  iron  and  the  raw  materials  of  its  manufacture. 
We  can  not  learn  that  he  ever  received  the  medal,  or  that 
anybody  received  it. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  369 

Between  1836  and  1839  other  attempts  to  use  coke  were 
made  at  several  furnaces  in  Pennsylvania,  but  all  the  experi- 
ments were  unsuccessful  or  unfortunate.  The  legislature  of 
Pennsylvania  passed  an  act  on  June  16,  1836,  "to  encourage 
the  manufacture  of  iron  with  coke  or  mineral  coal,"  which 
authorized  the  organization  of  companies  for  the  manufact- 
ure, transportation,  and  sale  of  iron  made  with  coke  or  coal. 
At  Farrandsville,  in  Clinton  county,  six  miles  north  of  Lock 
Haven,  half  a  million  dollars  were  sunk  by  a  Boston  com- 
pany in  a  disastrous  attempt  to  smelt  the  neighboring  ores 
with  coke  and  to  establish  other  iron  and  mining  enterprises. 
This  company  had  commenced  operations  in  mining  coal  as 
early  as  1833.  The  furnace  was  blown  in  in  the  summer 
of  1837  and  ran  probably  until  1839.  About  3,500  tons  of 
iron  were  made,  but  at  such  great  cost,  owing  to  the  impurity 
of  the  coal  and  the  distance  from  the  ore,  that  further  efforts 
to  make  iron  with  coke  were  abandoned.  At  Karthaus,  in 
Clearfield  county,  the  Clearfield  Coal  and  Iron  Company, 
embracing  Henry  C.  Carey,  Burd  Patterson,  John  White,  and 
others,  succeeded  in  1839,  under  the  management  of  William 
Firmstone,  in  making  pig  iron  with  coke  in  a  furnace  which 
was  built  in  1836  by  Peter  Bitner  (brother  of  Governor  Bit- 
ner)  and  John  Say,  but  at  the  close  of  the  year  the  whole 
enterprise  was  abandoned,  owing  to  the  lack  of  proper  trans- 
portation facilities.  A  furnace  at  Frozen  run,  in  Lycoming 
county,  made  some  pig  iron  with  coke  in  1838,  but  in  1839 
it  was  using  charcoal.  The  furnaces  at  Farrandsville  and 
Karthaus  were  both  supplied  with  hot-blasts,  the  former  in 
1837  and  the  latter  in  1839.  The  apparatus  at  Farrandsville 
was  made  at  Glasgow  and  was  the  best  then  known. 

Henry  Charles  Carey,  the  distinguished  political  econo- 
mist and  son  of  Mathew  Carey,  who  was  also  similarly  distin- 
guished, was  born  in  Philadelphia  on  the  15th  of  December, 
1793,  and  died  in  the  same  city  on  the  13th  of  October,  1879, 
having  nearly  completed  his  86th  year.  He  was  buried  at 
Burlington,  New  Jersey,  where  his  wife  had  previously  been 
buried.  It  is  not  generally  known  that  Henry  C.  Carey  was 
ever  interested  pecuniarily  in  the  manufacture  of  iron,  as  we 
have  shown  above. 

The  first  notable  success  in  the  use  of  bituminous  coal  in 


370  THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 

the  blast  furnace  in  this  country  was  achieved  at  three  fur- 
naces in  Western  Maryland.  Lonaconing  furnace,  at  Lonaco- 
ning,  in  the  Frostburg  coal  basin,  on  George's  creek,  about 
j  eight  miles  southwest  of  the  National  Road  at  Frostburg,  in 
.Alleghany  county,  was  built  in  1837  by  the  George's  Creek 
Company  to  use  coke,  and  in  June,  1839,  as  is  stated  by 
Johnson,  in  his  Notes  on  the  Use  of  Anthracite,  it  was  making 
about  seventy  tons  per  week  of  good  foundry  iron.  Alexan- 
der says  that  this  furnace  was  fifty  feet  high,  and 'that  "the 
air  was  heated  by  stoves  placed  near  the  tuyere  arches,  and 
attained  a  temperature  of  700  degrees  Fahrenheit."  The  fur- 
nace was  blown  by  an  engine  of  sixty  horse-power.  In  the 
same  coal  basin,  on  the  south  branch  of  Jenning's  run,  nine 
miles  northwest  of  Cumberland,  two  large  blast  furnaces 
were  built  in  1840  by  the  Mount  Savage  Iron  Company  to 
use  the  same  fuel.  These  furnaces  were  for  several  years 
successfully  operated  with  coke.  It  is  worthy  of  notice  that 
Alexander's  report  to  the  Governor  of  Maryland,  made  in 
1840,  and  which  was  the  first  able  and  comprehensive  con- 
tribution to  the  technical  literature  of  the  iron  and  steel  in- 
dustries of  this  country,  was  written  partly  to  show  to  the 
people  of  Maryland  the  feasibility  of  substituting,  coke  for 
charcoal  in  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron,  the  British  blast- 
furnace practice  at  that  time  being  largely  drawn  upon  for 
illustrations  of  what  had  already  been  accomplished  with  the 
new  fueL 

But  the  use  of  coke  did  not  come  rapidly  into  favor,  and 
many  experiments  with  it  were  attended .  with  loss.  It  was 
not  until  after  1850  that  its  use  began  to  exert  an  appreciable 
influence  upon  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron.  In  1849  there 
was  not  one  coke  furnace  in  blast  in  Pennsylvania.  Over- 
man stated  in  that  year  in  his  book  that  he  knew  of  no 
coke  furnaces  in  this  country  which  were  then  in  operation. 
Thus  far  the  use  of  coke  had  not  contributed  to  the  revo- 
lution to  which  we  have  referred  in  the  preceding  chapter. 
In  1856  there  were  twenty-one  furnaces  in  Pennsylvania  and 
three  in  Maryland  which  were  using  coke  or  were  adapted 
to  its  use,  and  their  total  production  in  that  year  was  44,481 
gross  tons  of  pig  iron.  After  1856  the  use  of  this  fuel  in 
the  blast  furnace  increased  in  Pennsylvania  and  was  extended 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  371 

to  other  States,  but  it  was  not  until  after  1865  that  its  .use  for 
this  purpose  increased  rapidly.  Not  more  than  100,000  gross 
tons  of  coke  were  consumed  in  the  production  of  pig  iron  in 
this  country  in  that  year.  A  tremendous  stride  was  taken 
in  the  next  fifteen  years,  however,  the  quantity  of  coke  con- 
sumed in  the  blast  furnaces  of  the  United  States  in  the  cen- 
sus year  1880  having  been  2,128,255  net  tons.  In  the  census 
year  1890  the  consumption  was  about  10,000,000  net  tons. 

The  first  furnaces  south  of  the  Potomac  which  used  coke  , 
as  fuel  appear  to  have  been  Potomac  furnace,  on  the  Poto-  / 
mac  river,  in  Loudoun  county,  Virginia,  about  three-quarters 
of  a  mile  below  Point  of  Rocks ;  Clinton  furnace,  nine  miles 
south  of  Morgantown,  in  Monongalia  county,  West  Virginia ; 
and  Vulcan  furnace,  in  Hampshire  county,  Virginia,  nine 
miles  southeast  of  Cumberland.  These  furnaces  were  origi- 
nally built  to  use  charcoal,  but  they  used  small  quantities  of 
coke  before  the  civil  war.  Potomac  furnace  is  said  by  Lesley 
to  have  commenced  to  use  coke  in  1848,  and  Clinton  furnace 
used  the  same  fuel  in  1856.  About  1858  Vulcan  furnace 
was  blown  in  with  coke.  We  presume  that  all  these  furnaces 
drew  their  supply  of  coke  from  the  Frostburg  region.  We 
know  of  no  other  coke  furnaces  south  of  the  Potomac  and 
the  Ohio  rivers  prior  to  1860.  Potomac  furnace  was  owned 
in  1859  by  John  W.  Geary,  afterwards  Governor  of  Pennsyl- 
vania. Anna  furnace,  on  the  right  bank  of  Cheat  river,  in 
the  village  of  Pridevale,  in  Monongalia  county,  West  Virgin- 
ia, made  an  unsuccessful  experiment  with  coke  in  1854,  after 
having  previously  used  charcoal. 

In  our  Tennessee  chapter  we  have  given  the  history  of 
the  first  coke  furnace  which  was  built  south  of  the  Potomac 
region.  This  was  Bluff  furnace,  at  Chattanooga,  which  was 
successfully  blown  in  with  coke  in  May,  1860,  after  having 
previously  used  charcoal. 

The  first  coke  furnace  built  in  the  South  after  the  war      . 
was  the  first  of  the  two  Rockwood  furnaces,  at  Rockwood,  * 
in  Roane  county,  Tennessee.     This  furnace  was  built  by  the 
Roane  Iron  Company  in  1867. 

While  the  effort  was  being  made  in  a  few  localities  in 
Pennsylvania  and  Maryland  to  introduce  the  use  of  coke  in 
the  blast  furnace  attention  was  also  directed  to  the  possibility 


372  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

of  using  uncoked  coal  for  the  same  purpose.  Alexander 
says  that  the  proprietors  of  Lonaconing  furnace,  in  Western 
Maryland,  used  raw  coal  before  the  appearance  of  his  report 
in  1840.  He  leaves  the  reader  to  infer  that  it  was  success- 
fully used,  but  he  probably  wrote  from  imperfect  information. 
Some  unsuccessful  experiments  were  made  with  raw  coal  in 
Clarion  county,  Pennsylvania,  about  1840.  In  the  sketch  of 
Mercer  county,  Pennsylvania,  in  Day's  Historical  Collections, 
printed  in  1843,  it  is  stated  that,  "  in  the  vicinity  of  Sharon, 
on  the  Pittsburgh  and  Erie  canal,  exists  a  most  valuable  bed 
of  coal  of  peculiar  quality,  between  anthracite  and  bitumi- 
nous, without  the  least  sulphur.  It  has  been  tried  success- 
fully for  smelting  iron  in  a  common  charcoal  furnace."  It 
is  very  probable  that  the  furnace  referred  to  was  in  Mer- 
cer county.  The  coal  mentioned  is  now  classed  among  bitu- 
minous varieties.  At  Arcole  furnace,  in  Lake  county,  Ohio, 
operated  by  Wilkeson  &  Co.,  raw  coal  from  Greenville,  Mer- 
cer county,  Pennsylvania,  was  experimented  with  about  1840. 
John  Wilkeson,  one  of  the  owners  of  the  furnace  at  that 
time,  writes  us  that  the  experiment  "  met  with  a  small  meas- 
ure of  success."  Doubtless  the  several  experiments  mention- 
ed were  not  the  only  ones  that  were  made  with  raw  coal  be- 
fore success  in  its  use  was  fully  achieved ;  and  doubtless,  too, 
none  of  the  experiments  mentioned  produced  any  more  sat- 
isfactory results  than  the  qualified  success  attained  at  Arcole 
furnace. 

The  first  completely  successful  use  of  raw  bituminous 
coal  in  the  blast  furnace  occurred  in  the  autumn  of  1845.  It 
is  circumstantially  described  in  the  following  extract  from  a 
pamphlet  entitled  Youngstown,  Past  and  Present,  published  in 
1875.  "  In  July,  1845,  Himrod  &  Vincent,  of  Mercer  county, 
Pennsylvania,  blew  in  the  Clay  furnace,  not  many  miles  from 
the  Ohio  line,  on  the  waters  of  the  Shenango.  About  three 
months  afterwards,  in  consequence  of  a  short  supply  of  char- 
coal, as  stated  by  Mr.  Davis,  their  founder,  a  portion  of  coke 
was  used  to  charge  the  furnace.  Their  coal  belongs  to  seam 
No.  1,  the  seam  which  is  now  used  at  Sharon  and  Youngs- 
town,  in  its  raw  state,  variously  known  as  '  free-burning 
splint/  or  '  block  coal,'  and  which  never  makes  solid  coke. 
A  difficulty  soon  occurred  with  the  cokers,  and,  as  Mr.  Him- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  373 

rod  states,  he  conceived  the  plan  of  trying  his  coal  without 
coking.  The  furnace  continued  to  work  well  and  to  produce 
a  fair  quality  of  metal.  It  is  admitted  that  Mr.  David  Him- 
rod,  late  of  Youngstown,  produced  the  first  metal  with  raw 
coal  about  the  close  of  the  year  1845." 

The  furnace  here  alluded  to  was  situated  on  Anderson's 
run,  in  Mercer  county,  Pennsylvania,  about  two  and  one-half, 
miles  southeast  of  Clarksville,  and  was  built  in  1845.  It  has 
been  abandoned  for  many  years.  In  the  chapter  relating  to 
Michigan  we  have  mentioned  the  part  taken  by  this  furnace 
at  a  later  day  in  smelting  Lake  Superior  iron  ores  with  the 
block  coal  of  the  Shenango  valley. 

In  1845  Messrs.  Wilkeson,  Wilkes  &  Co.,  of  Lowell,  in 
Poland  township,  Mahoning  county,  Ohio,  commenced  the 
erection  of  Mahoning  furnace,  as  related  in  the  chapter  de- 
voted to  Ohio,  expressly  to  use  coal  in  its  raw  state  from 
their  mine  near  Lowell.  The  furnace  was  successfully  blown 
in  with  this  fuel  by  John  Crowther  on  the  8th  of  August, 
1846.  It  was  while  this  furnace  was  in  course  of  erection 
that  the  use  of  raw  coal  at  Clay  furnace  was  commenced.  It 
may  be  added  that  Mr.  Davis,  the  founder  of  Clay  furnace, 
visited  and  inspected  Mahoning  furnace  while  work  upon  it 
was  progressing,  and  that  he  had  been  an  employe  of  the 
owners  of  Arcole  furnace  and  was  familiar  with  the  experi- 
ments that  had  been  made  at  it  in  the  use  of  raw  coal  about 
1840.  The  Trumbull  Democrat,  of  Warren,  Ohio,  for  August 
15,  1846,  in  an  account  of  the  blowing  in  of  Mahoning  fur- 
nace, states  that  "  to  these  gentlemen  (Wilkeson,  Wilkes  •& 
Co.)  belongs  the  honor  of  being  the  first  persons  in  the  United 
States  who  have  succeeded  in  putting  a  furnace  in  blast  with 
raw  bituminous  coal." 

John  Crowther  wras  an  Englishman,  born  at  Broseley,  in 
Shropshire,  on  May  7,  1797.  He  emigrated  to  the  United 
States  in  1844,  immediately  prior  to  which  time  he  had  been 
the  manager  of  seven  blast  furnaces  in  Staffordshire — five 
at  Stowheath  and  two  at  Osier  Bed.  Prior  to  his  connection 
with  the  Lowell  furnace  he  had  been  employed  as  manager 
of  the  furnaces  at  Brady's  Bend.  He  adapted  many  furnaces 
in  the  Mahoning  and  Shenango  valleys  to  the  use  of  block 
coal,  and  instructed  three  of  his  sons  in  their  management, 


374  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

namely,  Joshua,  Joseph  J.,  and  Benjamin.  He  died  on  April 
15,  1861,  at  Longton,  in  Staffordshire,  England,  where  he  is 
buried.  Joshua  Growth er  died  in  this  country  in  October, 
1883,  aged  over  60  years. 

After  it  had  been  demonstrated  at  Clay  and  Mahoning 
furnaces  that  the  block  coal  of  the  Shenango  and  Mahoning 
•valleys  could  be  used  in  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron  other 
furnaces  in  these  two  valleys  were  built  to  use  this  fuel,  and 
some  charcoal  furnaces  were  altered  to  use  it.  In  1850  there 
were,  however,  only  four  furnaces  in  the  Mahoning  valley 
and  only  seven  in  the  Shenango  valley  which  used  raw  coal. 
After  1850,  and  especially  after  the  introduction  into  these 
valleys  of  Lake  Superior  ores  about  1856,  the  use  of  raw  coal 
greatly  increased.  In  1856  six  furnaces  in  Pennsylvania  and 
thirteen  in  Ohio  were  using  this  fuel,  their  total  production 
in  that  year  being  25,073  gross  tons.  Some  progress  was 
afterwards  made  in  its  use  in  other  States,  particularly  in  In- 
diana, and  also  in  the  Hocking  valley  in  Ohio,  but  down  to 
1880  its  use  had  been  mainly  confined  to  the  Shenango  and 
Mahoning  valleys.  Since  1880  its  use  has  gradually  declin- 
ed, coke  having  almost  entirely  taken  its  place,  even  in  these 
two  valleys. 

Probably  the  first  use  of  raw  bituminous  coal  in  a  fur- 
nace south  of  the  Ohio  river  was  at  "  Alexander's  steam,  hot- 
blast,  stone-coal  furnace,"  afterwards  called  Airdrie  furnace, 
located  on  the  south  bank  of  Green  river,  at  Paradise,  in 
Muhlenburg  county,  Kentucky.  Lesley  says  that  this  furnace 
was  built  in  1857  "  for  bituminous  coal  from  the  Airdrie  bed 
and  black-band  iron  ore,  both  mined  close  by  the  furnace." 

An  air  furnace  was  built  at  Westham,  on  the  James  river, 
six  miles  above  Richmond,  during  the  Revolution,  which  is 
said  to  have  used  bituminous  coal  from  Chesterfield  county, 
Virginia,  in  the  manufacture  of  shot  and  shells  for  the  Con- 
tinental army  until  the  furnace  was  destroyed  by  Benedict 
Arnold  in  1781. 

But  a  much  earlier  use  of  bituminous  coal  in  connection 
with  the  manufacture  of  iron  in  this  country  was  at  Colonel 
Spotswood's  air  furnace  at  Massaponax,  which  is  mentioned 
in  our  Virginia  chapter.  Colonel  Byrd  says  that  "  sea  coal," 
the  old  name  for  pit  coal  or  bituminous  coal,  was  used  at  this 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  375 

air  furnace  when  he  visited  it  in  1732.  "  Sea  coal "  was  so 
named  because  it  was  originally  taken  to  London  from  the 
north  of  England  by  sea.  The  phrase  entered  into  common 
use,  and  was  applied  indiscriminately  to  all  bituminous  coal, 
even  if  it  had  not  been  near  the  sea.  It  may  still  be  heard 
in  New  England.  The  "  sea  coal "  used  at  Massaponax  had 
undoubtedly  come  from  England  or  Wales. 

Bituminous  coal  was  used  at  an  early  day  in  a  raw  state 
in  the  heating  furnaces  attached  to  American  rolling  and 
slitting  mills,  and  in  1817,  when  a  rolling  mill  was  built  at 
Plumsock,  in  Fayette  county,  Pennsylvania,  it  was  so  used 
in  both  heating  and  puddling  furnaces.  In  the  same  year 
coke  was  used  in  a  refinery  at  this  mill.  It  was  not,  howev- 
er, until  about  1830,  when  rolling  mills  became  numerous  at 
Pittsburgh,  that  the  use  of  bituminous  coal  in  puddling  and 
heating  furnaces  assumed  noteworthy  prominence. 


BEFORE  the  close  of  the  charcoal  era  in  1840  steam  had 
been  applied  to  the  blowing  of  American  furnaces,  but  water- 
power  was  still  in  general  use.  The  necessity  of  increasing 
the  blast  and  other  considerations  soon  led  to  the  more  gen- 
eral use  of  steam  blowing  engines  in  connection  with  anthra- 
cite and  bituminous  furnaces.  Another  improvement  in  blast- 
furnace management  also  had  its  beginning  about  the  close 
of  the  charcoal  era,  namely,  the  utilization  of  the  combustible 
gases  emitted  from  blast  furnaces.  These  gases  were  first  used 
to  heat  the  boilers  for  the  blowing  engines  and  afterwards 
to  heat  the  hot-blast  stoves.  This  branch  of  our  general  sub- 
ject will  be  referred  to  hereafter. 


376 


THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 


CHAPTER  XLIII. 

STATISTICS    OF   THE    PRODUCTION   OF    PIG    IRON    IN 
THE   UNITED   STATES. 

THE  following  table,  compiled  from  statistics  obtained 
by  the  American  Iron  and  Steel  Association,  exhibits  the 
production  of  pig  iron  in  the  United  States  in  each  year 
from  1854  to  1890,  classified  according  to  the  fuel  used.  In 
the  bituminous  column  is  included  pig  iron  made  with  both 
raw  coal  and  coke.  Net  tons  of  2,000  pounds  are  used. 


Years—  Net  tons. 

Anthracite. 

Charcoal. 

Bituminous. 

Total  tons. 

1854  

339,435 

342,298 

54,485 

736  218 

1855  (anthracite  passes  charcoal)  
1856  

381,866 
443,113 

339,922 
370,470 

62,390 
69,554 

784,178 
883,137 

1857  

390,385 

330,321 

77,451 

798,157 

1858  

361,430 

285,313 

58,351 

705,094 

1859  

471,745 

284,041 

84,841 

840,627 

I860 

519  211 

278  331 

122228 

919  770 

1861  

409,229 

195,278 

127,037 

731,544 

1862  

470,315 

186,660 

130,687 

787,662 

1863  

577,638 

212,005 

157,961 

947,604 

1864  .-  

684,018 

241.853 

210,125 

1,135,996 

1865  

479,558 

262,342 

189,682 

931,582 

1866  

749  367 

332,580 

268,396 

1  350  343 

1867  

798638 

344,341 

318,647 

1  461  626 

1868  

893,000 

370,000 

340,000 

1  603000 

1869  (bituminous  passes  charcoal)  
1870  

971,150 
930,000 

392,150 
365,000 

553,341 
570,000 

1,916,641 
1,865,000 

1871  

956,608 

385,000 

570,000 

1,911,608 

1872  

1,369,812 

500,587 

984,159 

2,854,558 

1873  

1,312,754 

577,620 

977,904 

2,868,278 

1874  

1  202  144 

576  557 

910  712 

2  689  413 

1875  (bituminous  passes  anthracite).. 
1876  

908,046 
794578 

410,990 
308649 

947,545 
990,009 

2,266,581 
2  093  236 

1877  

934  797 

317,843 

1,061,945 

2  314,585 

1878  

/•!  092  870 

,  293,  399 

1,191,092 

2,577,361 

1879  

1,273  024 

358,873 

1,438,978 

3,070,875 

1880 

1  807  651 

537  558 

1  950  205 

4  °95  414 

1881  

1  734  462 

638  838 

2  268  264 

4641  564 

1882  

2  042  138 

697  906 

2  438  078 

5  178  122 

1883  

1  885  596 

571  726 

2689650 

5  146,972 

1884  

1586453 

458418 

2  544,742 

4,589,613 

1885  

1  454  390 

399,844 

2,675,635 

4,529,869 

1886  

2,099,597 

459,557 

3,806,174 

6,365,328 

1887 

2  338  389 

578  182 

4  270  635 

7  187,206 

1888... 

1  925  729 

598  789 

4  743  989 

7,268,507 

1889  

1  920  354 

644  300 

5  951  495 

8,516,079 

1890  

2  448  781 

703  522 

7,154,725 

10,307,028 

IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  377 

This  table  shows  the  growth  of  the  manufacture  of  pig 
iron  with  anthracite  and  bituminous  coal  since  1854,  and  also 
the  periods  at  which  the  use  of  anthracite  coal  and  bitumi- 
nous coal  respectively  overtook  that  of  charcoal  in  the  blast 
furnace,  and  the  period  when  the  use  of  bituminous  coal 
overtook  that  of  anthracite  coal. 

Some  of  the  pig  iron  classed  above  as  having  been  pro- 
duced with  anthracite  and  bituminous  coal,  respectively,  was 
produced  with  a  mixture  of  these  fuels,  the  quantity  of  pig 
iron  so  produced  being  mainly  represented  in  the  anthracite 
column.  The  mixed  fuel  referred  to  was  not  used  to  any 
noticeable  extent  until  about  1875,  and  its  use  has  increased 
in  every'  succeeding  year.  The  total  quantity  of  pig  iron 
made  with  mixed  anthracite  and  bituminous  fuel  in  the  cen- 
sus year  1880  was  713,932  net  tons.  Of  the  production  of 
1,885,596  net  tons  of  so-called  anthracite  pig  iron  in  1883 
not  less  than  920,142  tons  were  produced  with  mixed  fuel, 
or  nearly  one-half  of  the  total  quantity.  Of  the  production 
of  2,448,781  net  tons  of  anthracite  and  mixed  anthracite  and 
bituminous  pig  iron  in  1890  only  279,184  net  tons  were  made 
with  anthracite  alone.  Very  little  of  the  pig  iron  in  the  bi- 
tuminous column  was  made  with  mixed  anthracite  and  bi- 
tuminous fuel.  In  late  years  mixed  fuel  has  only  been  used 
in  the  furnaces  represented  in  the  anthracite  column. 

Prior  to  the  organization  of  the  American  Iron  and  Steel 
Association,  at  Philadelphia,  on  March  6,  1855,  the  statistics 
of  our  production  of  pig  iron  were  not  annually  obtained. 
Such  statistics  as  were  obtained  and  have  been  preserved  are 
herewith  presented,  in  gross  tons,  by  decades.  For  1810  and 
1840  they  embrace  castings  from  the  furnace  as  well  as  pig 
iron.  For  1810,  1840,  and  1850  the  figures  given  are  census 
statistics;  for  1820  and  1830  they  are  from  estimates  by  rep- 
utable authorities. 

Production  of  pig  iron  in  the  United  States  in  1810 — 
53,908  gross  tons;  in  1820—20,000  tons;  in  1830—165,000 
tons;  in  1840—286,903  tons;  in  1850—564,755  tons.  We  have 
no  statistics  for  an  earlier  period  than  1810. 

For  the  first  time  in  our  history  the  production  of  pig 
iron  in  the  United  States  in  1890  exceeded  that  of  Great 
Britain  in  her  year  of  greatest  production. 


378  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER  XLIV. 

THE  MANUFACTURE   OF  BLISTER  AND  CRUCIBLE 
STEEL   IN   THE   UNITED  STATES. 

STEEL  was  manufactured  in  a  small  way  in  several  of 
the  American  colonies,  either  "  in  the  German  manner  "  or 
by  the  more  clearly  defined  cementation  process.  We  have  in 
preceding  chapters  incidentally  recorded  some  of  the  earliest 
attempts  that  were  made  to  manufacture  steel  by  these  pio- 
neer methods.  In  this  chapter  and  in  the  next  two  chapters 
we  will  endeavor  to  present  in  sufficient  detail  the  leading 
facts  in  the  development  of  the  present  magnificent  steel  in- 
dustry of  our  country.  To  do  this  we  must  first  briefly  notice 
the  very  insignificance  of  our  small  steel  industry  as  it  exist- 
ed in  colonial  times  and  long  after  the  close  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary struggle. 

Bishop  states  that  the  first  suggestion  of  the  manufacture 
of  steel  in  the  colonies  was  made  in  1655,  when  John  Tucker, 
of  Southold,  on  Long  Island,  informed  the  general  court  of 
New  Haven  "of  his  abilitie  and  intendment  to  make  steele 
there  or  in  some  other  plantation  in  the  jurisdiction,  if  he 
may  have  some  -things  granted  he  therein  propounds."  In 
October,  1655,  and  May,  1656,  special  privileges  were  granted 
to  the  petitioner,  but  we  are  not  told  whether  he  ever  made 
any  steel  or  not.  Bishop  cites  Hoadly's  N&iv  Haven  Colonial 
Records  as  his  authority  for  these  statements. 

We  will  here  copy  from  Colonel  William  Byrd's  Progress 
to  the  Mines,  in  1732,  from  which  we  have  heretofore  quoted, 
a  part  of  his  interview  with  Mr.  Chiswell,  the  manager  of  a 
Virginia  furnace  :  "  He  told  me  a  strange  thing  about  steel, 
that  the  making  of  the  best  remains  at  this  day  a  profound 
secret  in  the  breast  of  a  very  few,  and  therefore  is  in  dan- 
ger of  being  lost,  as  the  art  of  staining  of  glass  and  many 
others  have  been.  He  could  only  tell  me  they  used  beech 
wood  in  the  making  of  it  in  Europe,  and  burn  it  a  consider- 
able time  in  powder  of  charcoal ;  but  the  mystery  lies  in  the 
liquor  they  quench  it  in."  As  Mr.  Chiswell  was  himself  a 


IRON   IN   ALL  AGES.  379 

skilled  metallurgist  it  may  be  assumed  that  he  correctly  ex- 
pressed the  sentiment  of  his  day,  that  the  manufacture  of 
cemented  steel,  otherwise  known  as  blister  steel,  was  a  great 
mystery.  Crucible  steel  had  not  then  been  invented.  It  is 
not  strange,  however,  that  it  should  have  been  supposed  as 
late  as  1732  that  the  quality  of  steel  should  at  all  depend  up- 
on the  "  liquor  "  in  which  it  was  quenched,  as  the  same  an- 
tiquated notion  still  exists  in  Sheffield.  It  will  be  remem- 
bered by  the  reader  that  in  the  early  chapters  of  this  history 
we  referred  to  the  use  by  the  ancient  steelmakers  of  certain 
waters  in  Italy  and  Spain,  as  is  recorded  by  Pliny  and  Livy. 
In  the  chapter  relating  to  the  extension  of  the  manufact- 
ure o£  iron  in  New  England  we  have  stated  that  in  1728 
Samuel  Higley,  of  Simsbury,  and  Joseph  Dewey,  of  Hebron, 
in  Connecticut,  represented  to  the  legislature  that  the  first- 
named  had  "  with  great  pains  and  cost  found  out  and  obtained 
a  curious  art,  by  which  to  convert,  change,  or  transmute  com- 
mon iron  into  good  steel,  sufficient  for  any  use,  and  was  the 
very  first  that  ever  performed  such  an  operation  in  America." 
They  asked  the  exclusive  right  "  of  practicing  the  business  or 
trade  of  steel-making"  for  twenty  years.  A  patent  was  grant- 
ed to  them  for  ten  years,  provided  that  "the  petitioners  im- 
prove the  art  to  any  good  and  reasonable  perfection  within 
two  years  after  the  date  of  this  act."  They  do  not  seem  to 
have  succeeded  in  placing  their  enterprise  on  a  firm  founda- 
tion. Mr.  Charles  J.  Hoadly,  the  librarian  of  the  Connecti- 
cut State  Library,  sends  us  a  copy  of  the  certificate  of  two 
smiths  who  certified  to  the  excellence  of  Mr.  Higley's  steel. 

This  may  certify  all  concerned  that  Samuel  Higley  of  this  town  of 
Simsbury  came  to  the  shop  of  us  the  subscribers  being  blacksmiths,  some 
time  in  June  in  the  year  one  thousand  seven  hundred  and  twenty-five,  and 
desired  us  to  let  him  have  a  pound  or  two  of  iron  made  at  the  new  works 
near  Turkey  Hills,  which  we  according  to  his  desire  let  him  have,  shapeing 
severall  peices  according  to  his  order.  He  desired  that  we  would  take  no- 
tice of  them  that  we  might  know  them  again,  for,  said  he,  I  am  a  going  to 
make  Steel  of  this  Iron,  and  I  shall  in  a  few  days  bring  them  to  you  to  try 
for  steel.  Accordingly  he  brought  the  same  pieces  which  we  let  him  have, 
and  we  proved  them  and  found  them  good  steel,  which  was  the  first  steel 
that  ever  was  made  in  this  country  that  ever  we  saw  or  heard  of.  Since 
which  he  hath  made  farther  experiment,  taking  from  us  Iron  &  returning 
it  in  good  Steel.  As-  witness  our  hands  this  7th  day  of  May,  1728. 

TIMOTH  PHELPS.    JOHN  DRAKE. 


380  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Mr.  Hoadly  informs  us  that  the  mother  of  Governor  Jon- 
athan Trumbull,  of  Connecticut,  ("  Brother  Jonathan/')  was 
a  member  of  the  Higley  family,  and  that  John  Brown,  of 
Ossawatomie,  was  descended  from  the  same  family. 

In  October,  1740,  the  Connecticut  legislature  granted  to 
Messrs.  Fitch,  Walker,  and  Wyllys  "  the  sole  privilege  of 
making  steel  for  the  term  of  fifteen  years,  upon  this  condition, 
that  they  should  in  the  space  of  two  years  make  half  a  ton 
of  steel."  It  appears,  however,  that  this  condition  was  not 
complied  with,  and  that  the  privilege  was  extended  two  years 
longer,  or  until  1744,  before  which  time  Aaron  "Eliot  and  Ich- 
abod  Miller  certified  that,  "  after  many  expensive  and  fruit- 
less trials  with  which  sundry  of  the  owners  were  discouraged, 
the  affair  being  still  pursued  by  others  of  them,  it  has  so  far 
succeeded  that  there  has  been  made  more  than  half  a  ton  of 
steel  at  the  furnace  in  Symsbury  which  was  erected  for  that 
purpose  by  the  gentlemen  to  whom  the  aforesaid  grant  was 
made."  Fitch,  Walker,  and  Wyllys  were  not  mechanics,  the 
first  two  being  lawyers  and  the  last-named  being  the  secre- 
tary of  the  colony.  These  facts  we  learn  from  Mr.  Hoadly. 

Some  time  previous  to  1750  Aaron  Eliot  owned  a  steel 
furnace  at  Killingworth,  in  Middlesex  county,  Connecticut, 
and  in  this  furnace  he  succeeded  in  1761  in  converting  into 
good  steel  a  bar  of  iron  made  in  a  common  bloomary  from 
magnetic  sand  by  his  father,  the  Rev.  Jared  Eliot,  who  re- 
ceived a  gold  medal  from  the  London  Society  of  Arts  "  for 
producing  malleable  iron  from  the  American  black  sand." 
It  was  sent  through  "the  care  of  our  friend,  Ben  Franklin." 

In  May,  1772,  the  following  petition  wras  presented  to  the 
legislature  of  Connecticut  by  Aaron  Eliot,  for  a  copy  of  which 
document  we  are  indebted  to  the  politeness  of  Mr.  Hoadly. 

To  the  Honl  General  Assembly  now  sitting  in  Hartford.  The  memo- 
rial of  Aaron  Eliot  of  Killingworth  humbly  sheweth, 

That  your  memorialist  has  for  a  number  of  years  carried  on  the  Steel 
Manufacture  in  this  Colony  and  has  made  very  large  quantities,  sufficient 
to  supply  all  the  necessary  demands  of  that  article  in  this  Colony  as  well 
as  to  export  large  quantities  for  supplying  the  neighbouring  governments ; 
that  the  fortune  of  your  memorialist  has  not  been  large  enough  to  supply 
himself  with  a  sufficient  stock  to  carry  on  his  business,  &  has  therefore 
hitherto  been  obliged  to  procure  his  stock  of  iron  at  New  York  on  cred*  and 
pay  for  the  same  in  his  steel  when  made  at  the  moderate  price  of  £56  per 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  381 

ton,  [$186.66|,  the  £  being  equal  to  $3.33£,]  from  whence  it  has  been  again 
purchased  in  this  Colony  at  the  price  of  £75  and  £80  per  ton,  and  for  sev- 
eral years  past  almost  the  whole  supply  of  steel  in  this  Colony  has  been 
from  New  York  of  the  manufacture  of  your  memorialist  at  the  aforesd  enor- 
mous advance,  and  your  memorialist  humbly  conceives  that  the  interest  of 
the  Colony  is  to  incourage  necessary  and  advantageous  manufactories  with- 
in the  Colony,  not  only  for  the  necessary  consumption  of  the  Colony  but 
for  export,  which  your  memorialist  will  be  able  to  effect  in  the  aforesd  arti- 
cle of  steel  with  some  small  assistance  from  your  Hon™  to  procure  him  a 
sufficient  stock  and  thereby  save  larger  sums  of  money  within  this  Colony 
which  is  annually  paid  to  New  York  for  the  steel  manufactured  in  this  Col- 
ony :  Wherefore  your  memorialist  humbly  prays  your  Honours  to  loan  to 
him  £500  out  of  the  publick  treasury  for  three  years  without  interest, 
whereby  he  will  be  enabled  to  carry  on  the  afores  business  to  consider- 
able publick  advantage,  and  he  as  in  duty  bound  shall  ever  pray. 

AARON  ELIOT. 

Mr.  Eliot's  petition  was  granted  in  1772,  and  in  1775  the 
loan  was  continued  for  two  additional  years. 

In  1750  Massachusetts  had  one  steel  furnace.  In  the  New 
England  chapter  already  referred  to  we  have  stated  that  steel 
was  made  by  Eliphalet  Leonard  at  Easton,  in  Massachusetts, 
about  1775  or  1776,  and  that  in  1787  his  son,  Jonathan  Leon- 
ard, increased  the  facilities  for  its  manufacture  at  the  same 
place.  It  is  stated  that  "the  article  was  made  in  considera- 
ble amount,  and  cheaper  than  imported  steel,"  but  it  was  in- 
ferior to  foreign  steel  for  edge  tools  and  cutlery.  This  was 
cemented  steel.  By  reference  to  the  same  chapter  it  will  be 
seen  that  during  the  Revolution  steel  was  made  at  Cumber- 
land, in  Rhode  Island,  by  a  German,  "from  the  pig  after  the 
mode  of  his  country,"  and  that  about  1799  steel  was  made  at 
Canton,  in  Massachusetts,  "from  crude  iron  by  the  German 
process."  Other  early  steel  enterprises  in  Massachusetts  are 
recorded  in  the  same  chapter. 

Peter  Townsend,  who  became  the  proprietor  of  the  Ster- 
ling iron  works  in  New  York  before  the  Revolution, 
in  1776  the  first  steel  made  in  that  province.  It  was  made 
"  at  first  from  pig  and  afterwards  from  bar  iron,  in  the  Ger- 
man manner."  Blister  steel  was  made  in  1810  by  Peter  Town- 
send,  Jr.,  which  is  said  to  have  been  of  as  good  quality  for 
the  manufacture  of  edge  tools  as  steel  made  from  Danne- 
mora  iron.  At  Amenia,  in  Dutchess  county,  New  York,  steel 
was  made  for  the  use  of  the  Continental  army. 

New  Jersey  had  one  steel  furnace  in  1750.    Steel  was  made 


382  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


at  Trenton  during  the  Revolution,  "but  the  business  after- 
wards declined." 

Pennsylvania  had  a  steel  furnace  in  Chester  county,  called 
Vincent's,  about  1750,  and  in  that  year  it  had  two  other  steel 
furnaces  at  Philadelphia.  Of  one  of  the  last  named,  Will- 
iam Branson's,  Richard  Hockley  writes  to  Thomas  Penn  on 
June  3,  1750  :  "  As  to  steel,  Mr.  Branson  says  the  sort  he 
made,  which  was  blistered  steel,  10  tons  would  be  ten  years 
in  selling."  The  other  furnace,  Stephen  Paschal's,  which 
was  built  in  1747,  was  owned  in  1787  by  Nancarrow  &  Mat- 
lock,  when  it  was  visited  by  General  Washington,  and  is  said 
to  have  been  "the  largest  and  best  in  America."  In  1770 
Whitehead  Humphreys  was  the  proprietor  of  a  steel  furnace 
on  Seventh  street,  in  Philadelphia.  During  the  Revolution 
he  made  steel  for  the  Continental  army  from  Andover  iron. 
In  1786  the  legislature  of  Pennsylvania  loaned  £300  to  Mr. 
Humphreys  for  five  years  to  aid  him  in  making  steel  from 
bar  iron  "  as  good  as  in  England." 

During  the  Revolution  Henry  Hollingsworth,  at  Elkton, 
in  Cecil  county,  Maryland,  manufactured  muskets  for  the 
Continental  army.  Some  of  his  bayonets  were  complained 
of  as  being  too  soft,  "  which  he  ascribed  to  the  bad  quality 
of  the  American  steel  with  which  they  were  pointed."  Bishop 
does  not  mention  any  steel  furnace  in  Maryland,  and  we  are 
therefore  unable  to  conjecture  where  Mr.  Hollingsworth  ob- 
tained his  poor  steel.  We  are  also  without  positive  informa- 
tion concerning  the  colonial  or  Revolutionary  steel  industry 
of  Virginia  and  other  southern  colonies.  In  most  of  these 
colonies  bounties  wrere  offered  at  the  beginning  of  the  Revo- 
lution for  the  establishment  of  steel  furnaces  as  well  as  other 
manufacturing  enterprises. 

In  the  celebrated  report  of  Alexander  Hamilton,  dated 
December  5,  1791,  it  is  stated  that  "steel  is  a  branch  which 
has  already  made  a  considerable  progress,  and  it  is  ascertain- 
ed that  some  new  enterprises  on  a  more  extensive  scale  have 
been  lately  set  on  foot."  In  the  same  year,  1791,  in  a  reply 
to  Lord  Sheffield's  Observations  on  the  Commerce  of  the  United 
States,  Tench  Coxe  stated  that  "about  one-half  of  the  steel 
consumed  in  the  United  States  is  home-made,  and  new  fur- 
naces are  building  at  this  moment.  The  wrorks  being  few, 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  383 

and  the  importations  ascertained,  this  fact  is  known  to  be 
accurate."  The  works  here  referred  to  were  all  doubtless 
cementation  furnaces,  which  produced  blister  steel. 

In  1805  there  were  two  steel  furnaces  in  Pennsylvania, 
which  produced  annually  150  tons  of  steel.  One  of  these  was 
in  Philadelphia  county.  In  1810  there  were  produced  in  the 
whole  'country  917  tons  of  steel,  of  which  Pennsylvania  pro- 
duced 531  tons  in  five  furnaces,  one  at  Philadelphia,  and  one 
each  in  Philadelphia,  Lancaster,  Dauphin,  and  Fayette  coun- 
ties. Tlie  remainder  was  produced  in  Massachusetts,  Rhode 
Island,  New  Jersey,  Virginia,  and  South  Carolina,  each  State 
having  one  furnace.  In  1813  there  was  a  steel  furnace  at 
Pittsburgh,  owrned  by  Tuper  &  McKowan,  which  was  the 
first  in  that  city.  Tench  Coxe  declared  in  this  year  that  the 
manufacture  of  "  common  steel,  iron  wire,  and  edge  tools " 
had  been  greatly  advanced  since  1810. 

In  1818  John  and  Jacob  Rodgers,  Isaac  Smedley,  and 
James  Wood  were  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  saws  at 
Valley  Forge,  Pennsylvania,  on  the  Montgomery  county  side 
of  Valley  creek.  Mr.  Wood  was  the  manager  of  the  works. 
The  company  built  a  furnace  in  that  year  for  the  manufact- 
ure of  crucible  steel  for  saw  plates,  John  Parkins  and  his 
son,  John  Parkins,  Jr.,  both  from  England,  being  employed 
as  practical  steelmakers.  These  persons  are  said  to  have 
made  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  make  cast  steel  at  New 
York  city  in  1812.  The  company  at  Valley  Forge  is  said 
by  Mr.  Wood's  son,  Mr.  John  Wood,  of  Conshohocken,  who 
is  now  living,  to  have  made  some  excellent  steel,  but  the 
project  was  soon  abandoned.  Clay  for  crucibles  was  brought 
from  Perth  Amboy,  and  some  plumbago  crucibles  were  im- 
ported from  England.  This  is  the  first  important  crucible-steel 
enterprise  in  our  history  that  has  been  brought  to  our  notice. 

In  1831  a  convention  of  the  friends  of  American  industry 
assembled  at  New  York,  at  which  were  submitted  many  able 
reports  upon  the  iron  and  steel  industries  of  this  country  as 
they  existed  at  that  time.  From  one  of  these  reports,  pre- 
pared by  Mr.  John  R.  Coates,  of  Philadelphia,  we  learn  that 
there  wrere  then  in  the  United  States  fourteen  blister-steel 
furnaces,  distributed  as  follows:  two  at  Pittsburgh,  one  at 
Baltimore,  three  at  Philadelphia,  three  at  New  York,  one  in 


384  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

York  county,  Pennsylvania,  one  at  Troy,  New  York,  two  in 
New  Jersey,  and  one  at  Boston.  The  report  mentioned  that 
"  these  furnaces  are  known  to  be  now  in  operation,  and  of  a 
capacity  sufficient  to  supply  more  than  1,600  tons  of  steel  an- 
nually, an  amount  equal  to  the  whole  importation  of  steel  of 
every  kind."  The  report  continued :  "  But  it  should  be  ob- 
served that  steel  for  common  agricultural  purposes  is  not  the 
best,  although  it  is  most  used ;  and  that  American  is  quite 
equal  to  English  steel  used  for  such  purposes  in  England. 
American  competition  has  excluded  the  British  '  common 
blister  steel  altogether.  The  only  steel  now  imported  from 
Great  Britain  is  of  a  different  and  better  quality  than  that  . 
just  mentioned."  The  common  blister  steel  of  American 
manufacture  which  is  above  referred  to  was  used  for  plow- 
shares, shovels,  scythes,  and  cross-cut  and  mill  saws. 

The  better  qualities  of  steel  which  were  not  made  in  this 
country  in  1831,  but  were  imported  from  Europe,  almost 
entirely  from  England,  were  known  as  (1)  best  blister  steel, 
made  from  iron  from  the  Dannemora  mines  in  Sweden ;  (2) 
shear  steel,  of  the  same  origin ;  and  (3)  cast  steel,  made  in 
crucibles.  Concerning  blister  steel  of  the  best  quality  the  re- 
port from  which  we  have  quoted  says  that  "  steel  is  now  made 
at  Pittsburgh,  and  may  be  made  in  New  York  and  Connecti- 
cut, bearing  a  fair  comparison  with  the  best  hoop  L  or  Dan- 
nemora steel.  No  difference  is  observed  where  trials  have 
been  made  without  disclosing  to  the  judges  the  origin  of 
either."  The  report  adds  that  iron  equal  to  Swedish  for  the 
manufacture  of  steel  had  been  recently  manufactured  "by 
improved  processes  from  the  ore  of  Juniata,  and  both  sides 
of  the  line  between  New  York  and  Connecticut."  Shear  steel 
was  the  best  blister  steel  of  the  cementation  furnace  rework- 
ed under  a  hammer  into  bars  suitable  for  the  manufacture 
of  coarse  cutlery  and  edge  tools.  The  manufacture  of  this 
steel  was  then  about  being  introduced  into  this  country. 
The  report  says :  "  England  has  hitherto  monopolized  this 
branch  also,  from  being  in  possession  of  the  only  European 
steel  that  would  bear  the  expense  of  preparation,  and  from 
the  perfection  of  her  machinery.  She  has  now  the  honor 
of  transferring  a  portion  of  her  experience  and  skill  to  the 
United  States." 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  385 

Cast  steel,  which  was  then  made  only  from  the  best  blister 
steel,  was  not  made  in  the  United  States.  Several  attempts 
to  make  it  with  profit  had  been  unfortunate  in  their  results. 
"  The  causes  of  failure,"  says  the  report,  "  were,  first,  the 
want  of  the  best  quality  of  blister  steel  at  a  reasonable  price, 
and,  second,  the  want,  or  expense,  of  crucibles  of  proper 
quality,  wherein  the  blister  steel  is  to  be  melted  and  smelted. 
Black  lead  and  a  variety  of  clays  have  been  tried,  but  the 
weakness  of  these  materials  has  heretofore  caused  a  loss  to 
the  manufacturer."  The  English  Stourbridge  clay  was  the 
only  clay  which  in  1831  was  known  to  possess  the  qualities 
required  for  crucibles.  The  report  says  that  "  the  explorations 
of  the  present  year  have  disclosed  the  existence  of  clay  anal- 
ogous to  that  of  Stourbridge,"  the  discoveries  being  made  in 
Centre,  Clearfield,  and  Lycoming  counties  in  Pennsylvania 
and  in  the  vicinity  of  Baltimore.  The  expectations  created  by 
these  discoveries  were  never  realized. 

From  1831,  the  date  of  the  report  from  which  we  have  just 
quoted,  to  1860  very  little  progress  was  made  in  developing 
the  manufacture  of  the  finer  qualities  of  steel  in  the  United 
States.  In  the  first  edition  of  Appletons'  Cydopcedia,  printed 
in  1860,  it  was  stated  that  "  American  cast  steel  is  hardly 
known  in  the  markets."  During  this  period  of  thirty  years, 
however,  indeed  just  after  its  commencement,  there  was  one 
notable  and  successful  attempt  to  make  steel  of  the  best 
quality,  the  detailed  history  of  which  we  shall  now  give. 

In  August,  1832,  William  Garrard  and  John  Hill  Gar- 
rard,  brothers,  commenced  the  manufacture  of  crucible  steel 
on  the  Miami  Canal,  at  Cincinnati,  in  works  which  had  been 
previously  erected  by  them,  and  which  were  projected  in  the 
autumn  of  1831.  Both  were  comparatively  young  men,  na- 
tives of  England,  but  residents  of  the  United  States  for  ten 
years  previous  to  the  year  mentioned.  The  style  of  the  firm 
was  Garrard  Brothers,  but  William,  the  elder  brother,  was  the 
projector  and  practical  manager  of  the  enterprise.  To  him 
and  to  his  friend,  Mr.  James  E.  Emerson,  of  Beaver  Falls, 
Pennsylvania,  we  are  indebted  for  the  very  full  details  we 
are  enabled  to  present  of  the  first  successful  works  in  the 
United  States  for  the  manufacture  of  crucible  steel  of  the 
best  quality.  Mr.  Emerson  has  also  sent  us  an  illustration 


386  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

of  the  works,  printed  from  a  wood-cut  made  in  1833.    They 
were  called  the  Cincinnati  steel  works. 

The  works  were  located  on  Canal  street,  extending  back 
to  Providence  street,  and  were  built  upon  a  portion  of  the 
ground  now  occupied  by  the  Lion  brewery.  They  embraced 
a  furnace  for  converting  bar  iron  into  blister  steel ;  two  pot- 
holes, each  accommodating  two  pots,  or  crucibles ;  and  the 
necessary  machinery  for  manufacturing  sawrs  and  files.  In 
August,  1832,  the  first  cast  steel  was  made,  and  in  November, 
1832,  the  first  mill  and  cross-cut  saws  were  made.  Dr.  Gar- 
rard  wrote  us  in  1884  as  follows  concerning  his  enterprise. 

I  made  my  own  blister  steel.  You  will  see  in  the  picture  of  my  works 
a  large  round  stack  that  contained  my  converting  furnace.  It  was  built  for 
two  ten-ton  converting  furnaces.  The  first  crucibles  I  experimented  with 
were  German  plumbago  pots,  but  they  were  a  failure,  as  they  spoiled  the 
steel  by  giving  out  too  much  gross  carbon.  I  then  went  to  Western  Vir- 
ginia, near  New  Cumberland,  and  found  a  clay  that  very  much  resembled 
English  Stourbridge  clay,  and  by  putting  in  the  pots  made  of  it  about  the 
same  proportion  of  burnt  material  they  stood  about  as  well  as  the  Stour- 
bridge pots,  and  answered  my  purpose  very  well.  In  respect  to  the  build- 
ing of  my  works,  I  was  my  own  architect,  drew  a  plan  for  my  works  on 
paper,  and  superintended  the  brick-laying  myself;  in  fact,  the  building  and 
machinery  were  all  made  from  my  own  drawings  and  under  my  own  su- 
perintendence. I  sold  my  steel  and  manufactured  articles  principally  to 
manufacturers.  There  were  some  wholesale  houses  that  bought  of  me,  but 
they  were  importing  houses,  and  when  the  Sheffield  manufacturers  found 
that  I  was  making  as  good  steel  and  manufactured  saws  and  files  as  good 
as  they  did  they  gave  our  merchants  such  an  extended  time  of  credit  that 
they  bought  as  little  as  possible  from  us. 

Mr.  Emerson  furnished  us  in  1883  with  the  following  ad- 
ditional information  concerning  the  Cincinnati  steel  works. 

The  Doctor  still  has  his  old  moulds  in  which  he  formed  his  crucibles, 
in  the  regular  English  way.  For  best  cast  steel  he  first  used  Swedes'  iron. 
For  steel  used  for  saws,  springs,  etc.,  he  used  Tennessee  charcoal  iron.  For 
best  cast  steel  he  also  used  considerable  Missouri  charcoal  iron.  In  addi- 
tion to  saws  and  springs  he  made  steel  for  chopping  axes,  files,  and  tools  in 
general.  The  material  used  was  all  very  high-priced,  so  that  the  owners 
were  obliged  to  sell  their  spring  steel  at  from.  10  to  15  cents  per  pound,  and 
best  cast  steel  at  from  18  to  25  cents.  The  very  crude  machinery  and  man- 
ner in  which  all  of  the  work  had  to  be  done  added  also  to  the  cost. 

The  enterprise  was  started  during  Jackson's  first  term  of  office,  and 
about  the  time  that  the  law  was  passed  for  a  gradual  reduction  of  duties  on 
all  imports  for  a  decade,  and  with  this  gradual  reduction  of  duties  foreign 
importation  increased,  to  pay  for  which  the  country  was  drained  of  money. 
Manufactures  were  closed,  culminating  in  the  great  panic  of  1837,  at  which 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  387 

time  the  enterprise  of  our  venerable  friend  went  down  in  the  general  wreck 
that  engulfed  the  infant  manufactures  in  their  cradles  all  over  the  country. 

After  Garrard  Brothers  had  commenced  the  manufacture 
of  steel  W.  T.  Middleton  became  a  partner  in  the  enterprise, 
taking  the  place  of  Dr.  Garrard's  brother.  Subsequently 
Charles  Fox,  a  lawyer,  became  a  partner.  After  the  failure 
in  1837  the  business  was  continued  in  a  restricted  way  until 
1844  by  Dr.  Garrard  and  Mr.  Fox,  the  principal  product  of 
the  works  being  blister  steel. 

In  the  Cincinnati  Directory  for  1834,  published  by  E. 
Deming,  at  No.  5  Johnston's  ROWT,  there  will  be  found  the 
following  announcement  on  page  233  :  "  Steel,  Saw,  and  File 
Factory,  on  Plumb  Street,  near  the  corporation  line,  owned 
by  Middleton,  Garrard  &  Co.,  manufacturers  of  all  kinds  of 
Cast  Steel,  by  steam-power.  Attached  to  this  establishment 
is  a  Saw  and  File  Factory,  in  which  these  articles  are  made 
equal  in  quality  to  those  imported." 

Mr.  Emerson  has  sent  us  a  file  made  in  1833  from  the 
crucible  steel  of  these  works,  and  a  turning-tool  made  from 
some  of  the  very  first  steel  made  by  them  in  1832,  and  used 
in  the  works  for  turning  their  chilled  rolls  for  sheet  steel. 
He  has  also  sent  us  other  interesting  relics  of  these  works, 
which  he  thus  describes  in  a  letter  written  in  1884. 

At  the  first  available  opportunity,  after  receiving  your  letter  of  the  26th 
of  December,  I  visited  the  home  of  Dr.  Garrard  and  secured  an  old  turning 
tool  and  an  old  punch  used  as  a  die  for  cutting  teeth  in  saws,  the  steel  of 
which  the  Doctor  informed  me  was  made  in  1832.  I  have  forged  quite  a 
ghastly-looking  knife-blade  off  the  end  of  the  old  turning  tool,  and  a  small- 
er blade  off  the  end  of  the  saw-tooth  punch,  and  have  hardened,  temper- 
ed, and  finished  them.  I  have  been  working  steel  for  about  forty  years. 
At  Trenton,  New  'Jersey,  during  the  civil  war,  I  manufactured  over  75,000 
cavalry  sabres  and  over  100,000  officers'  swords  for  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment, and  I  think  that  I  know  something  about  steel  and  about  tools.  I 
am  willing  to  submit  these  tools  to  any  expert  and  risk  my  reputation  that 
in  quality  they  are  fully  -equal  to  the  best  steel  made  in  this  country  to- 
day, and  also  equal  to  the  best  imported  English  steel.  Here  is  an  affidavit 
from  the  Doctor : 

Personally  appeared  Dr.  William  Garrard,  of  Fallston,  Beaver  coifhty, 
Pennsylvania,  and  being  duly  sworn  deposes  and  says  :  That  the  two  pieces 
of  steel  from  which  these  two  knives  were  forged,  tempered,  and  finished 
by  Messrs.  Emerson,  Smith  &  Co.,  of  Beaver  Falls,  Pennsylvania,  Were  made 
by  him  at  Cincinnati,  Ohio,  in  1832,  by  first  converting  Missouri  charcoal 
iron  into  blister  steel  by  the  usual  cementation  process,  then  by  melting  in 
pots  made  by  himself,  pouring  into  ingots,  then  forging  or  tilting  in  the 


388  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

usual  manner.    The  large  piece  was  used  as  a  lathe  turning  tool,  and  the 
small  one  as  a  punch  for  toothing  saws.    Furthermore  the  said  William 
Garrard  sayeth  not. 
Sworn  and  subscribed  before  me  this  28th  day  of  1 

January,  A.  D.  1884.    WINFIELD  S.  MOORE,        [•    WILLIAM  GARRARD. 

[SEAL]  Notary  Public.} 

The  Doctor  has  placed  in  my  hands  numerous  testimonials  from  man- 
ufacturers who  used  his  steel  for  different  purposes — for  chopping  axes,  files, 
springs,  saws,  etc. 

All  of  the  articles  mentioned  above  are  now  in  our  pos- 
session and  we  prize  them  highly.  An  examination  of  them 
by  experts  will  fully  sustain  the  claim  that  they  are  made 
of  the  best  crucible  tool  steel. 

At  our  request  Mr.  J.  Blodget  Britton,  the  eminent  metal- 
lurgical chemist,  has  made  an  analysis  of  liberal  borings  from 
the  end  of  the  turning  tool  from  which  Mr.  Emerson  has 
forged  the  "  ghastly-looking  knife-blade,"  the  remaining  part 
forming  the  handle  of  the  knife.  The  analysis  is  as  follows. 
It  will  possess  great  interest  for  all  our  readers  who  would 
know  the  chemical  elements  of  the  first  tool  steel  of  best  qual- 
ity that  this  country  has  produced. 


Pure  iron 98.770 

Carbon 1.048 

Silicon 102 

Silicates...  .020 


Manganese 019 

Sulphur doubtful  traces 


Total 99.974 


Phosphorus 015 

Dr.  Garrard  was  born  in  Laxfield  parish,  Suffolk  county, 
England,  on  the  21st  of  October,  1803.  He  removed  with  his 
father's  family  to  the  United  States  in  1822,  the  whole  fam- 
ily finding  a  home  near  Pittsburgh.  The  Doctor  says :  "  It 
was  during  the  last  two  years  that  I  was  with  my  father 
that  I  built  a  small  converter  and  experimented  on  the  vari- 
ous kinds  of  bar  iron,  converting  them  into  blister  steel,  and 
through  a  careful  test  of  the  same  I  became  convinced  that  I 
could  make  steel  equal  to  the  English."  He  was  not  a  trained 
steelmaker,  nor  even  an  ironmaker.  His  trade  was  that  of  a 
bricklayer,  but  he  had  a  liking  for  chemistry,  and  his  atten- 
tion being  turned  to  the  manufacture  of  steel  this  taste  was 
utilized.  The  rest  of  his  story  we  have  told. 

John  Hill  Garrard  died  at  Pittsburgh  in  1883,  aged  78 
years,  and  Dr.  Garrard  died  at  Fallston,  in  Beaver  county, 
Pennsylvania,  on  March  18,  1889,  aged  over  85  years.  ' 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  389 

The  following  is  a  list  of  all  the  works  in  Pennsylvania 
that  were  engaged  in  the  conversion  of  steel  in  1850,  with 
their  product :  James  Rowland  &  Co.,  Kensington,  (Philadel- 
phia,) 600  tons ;  J.  Robbins,  Kensington,  500  tons ;  Earp  & 
Brink,  Kensington,  100  tons ;  Robert  S.  Johnson,  Kensington, 
400  tons;  W.  &  H.  Rowland,  Oxford,  (Philadelphia,)  700  tons; 
R.  &  G.  D.  Coleman,  Martic,  Lancaster  county,  400  tons ;  R. 
H.  &  W.  Coleman,  Castle  Fin,  York  county,  100  tons ;  Singer, 
Hartman  &  Co.,  Pittsburgh,  700  tons;  Coleman,  Hailman  & 
Co.,  Pittsburgh,  800  tons ;  Jones  &  Quigg,  Pittsburgh,  1,200 
tons;  Spang  &  Co.,  Pittsburgh,  200  tons;  G.  &  J.  H.  Shoen- 
berger,  Pittsburgh,  200  tons;  S.  McKelvy,  Pittsburgh,  178 
tons ;  total,  thirteen  works,  with  a  product  of  6,078  tons.  Of 
this  quantity  only  44  tons  were  cast  steel.  The  foregoing  in- 
formation is  not  found  in  the  census  of  1850,  but  was  obtain- 
ed by  an  association  of  Pennsylvania  ironmasters.  The  cen- 
sus of  that  year  greatly  understates  the  extent  of  our  steel 
industry,  and  erroneously  makes  no  mention  of  the  manu- 
facture of  steel  in  any  other  State  than  Pennsylvania. 

From  about  1830  to  1860  many  attempts  were  made  at 
Pittsburgh  to  produce  blister  and  crucible  steel.  Between 
1828  and  1830  Simeon  Broadmeadow,  an  Englishman,  and 
his  son  made  blister  steel,  and  about  1831  they  made  some 
cast  steel  in  pots  of  their  own  manufacture.  The  attempt  to 
manufacture  cast  steel  was  a  failure.  Josiah  Ankrim  &  Son, 
file-makers,  are  said  to  have  succeeded  in  making  their  own 
steel  after  1830,  but  by  what  process  is  not  stated.  In  1831 
Wetmore  &  Havens  successfully  produced  blister  steel.  In 
1833  the  firm  of  G.  &  J.  H.  Shoenberger  commenced  to  man- 
ufacture blister  steel,  and  in  1841  Patrick  and  James  Dunn 
attempted  the  manufacture  of  crucible  cast  steel  for  this  firm. 
This  last  enterprise  was  abandoned  in  a  year  or  two.  "  The 
crucibles  employed  were  made  of  American  clay,  and,  as  may 
be  supposed,  were  ill-suited  to  the  purpose  required."  The 
firm  continued  to  make  »blister  steel  until  1862,  when  its  fur- 
ther manufacture  was  abandoned.  It  used  Juniata  blooms 
exclusively.  About  1840  the  firm  of  Isaac  Jones  &  William 
Coleman  was  formed  to  manufacture  blister  steel,  which  busi- 
ness was  successfully  prosecuted  until  1845,  when  the  firm 
was  dissolved,  Mr.  Jones  retiring.  In  the  same  year  Jones  & 


390  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Quigg  built  the  Pittsburgh  steel  works,  also  to  manufacture 
blister  steel.  Mr.  Coleman  continued  alone  the  manufacture 
of  blister  steel  until  1846,  when  a  partnership  was  formed  un- 
der the  name  of  Coleman,  Hailman  &  Co.  Both  of  these  new 
firms  were  successful  in  making  blister  steel  of  good  quality. 
They  were  also  successful  in  manufacturing  some  cast  steel 
of  a  low  grade.  The  first  slab  of  cast  plow  steel  ever  rolled 
in  the  United  States  was  rolled  by  William  Woods  at  the  steel 
works  of  Jones  &  Quigg,  in  1846,  and  shipped  to  John  Deere, 
of  Moline,  Illinois.  About  1846  the  firm  of  Tingle  &  Sug- 
den,  file-makers,  made  its  own  steel.  This  is  said  to  have  been 
cast  steel.  The  firm  is  also  reported  to  have  made  some  cast 
steel  for  sale.  Juniata  iron  was  used  by  nearly  all  of  these 
manufacturers. 

In  1852  McKelvy  &  Blair,  of  Pittsburgh,  who  had  com- 
menced the  manufacture  of  files  in  1850,  made  cast  steel  of 
good  quality,  but  not  always  of  the  best  quality.  It  was, 
however,  t)f  a  quality  so  creditable,  and  so  uniformly  superi- 
or to  any  that  had  previously  been  made  at  Pittsburgh,  that 
the  firm  may  be  regarded  as  the  pioneer  in  the  production  of 
cast  steel  in  large  quantities  in  that  city.  In  1853  the  firm 
of  Singer,  Nimick  &  Co.,  of  Pittsburgh,  which  had  been  or- 
ganized in  1848  for  the  manufacture  of  blister  steel,  and  in 
1855  Isaac  Jones,  then  doing  business  in  his  own  name,  were 
successful  in  producing  the-  usual  grades  of  cast  steel  for 
saw,  machinery,  and  agricultural  purposes,  but  they  did  not 
make  tool  steel  of  the  best  quality  as  a  regular  product.  That 
honor  was  reserved  for  the  firm  of  Hussey,  Wells  &  Co., 
which  began  business  in  1859  and  in  the  following  year  was 
successful  in  making  crucible  cast  steel  of  the  best  quality 
as  a  regular  product.  This  was  done  with  American  iron. 
In  1862  the  firm  of  Park,  Brother  &  Co.,  also  of  Pittsburgh, 
accomplished  the  same  achievement,  also  with  American  iron. 
These  were  the  first  firms  in  this  country  to  meet  with  com- 
plete financial  as  well  as  mechanical*  success  in  this  difficult 
department  of  American  manufacturing  enterprise.  Both  of 
the  works  referred  to  are  still  in  operation. 

For  many  of  the  foregoing  details  concerning  the  man- 
ufacture of  steel  at  Pittsburgh  we  are  indebted  to  an  anony- 
mous publication,  entitled  Pittsburgh,  its  Industry  and  Com- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  391 

merce,  published  in  1870,  and  to  George  H.  Thurston's  Pitts- 
burgh and  Allegheny  in  the  Centennial  Year. 

While  these  experiments  in  the  manufacture  of  the  best 
quality  of  steel  were  being  made  at  Pittsburgh  other  locali- 
ties were  engaged  in  making  similar  experiments.  By  far 
the  most  important  of  these  were  made  by  the  Adirondack 
Iron  and  Steel  Company,  whose  works  were  at  Jersey  City, 
New  Jersey.  They  were  built  in  1848  to  make  blister  steel 
from  charcoal  pig  iron  made  at  Adirondack,  in  Essex  county, 
New  York,  and  also  to  make  cast  steel.  The  pig  iron  was 
puddled  with  wood  at  Adirondack,  and  then  formed  into  bars 
under  a  hammer,  which  were  sent  to  Jersey  City,  where  they 
were  converted  into  blister  steel.  An  attempt  to  make  cast 
steel  by  melting  the  blister  steel  in  clay  crucibles  was  a  fail- 
ure, but  subsequently  cast  steel  of  good  quality  was  made  in 
black-lead  crucibles.  This  result  was  reached  as  early  as 
February,  1849,  and  possibly  a  few  months  earlier.  Of  the 
excellent  quality  of  the  cast  steel  manufactured  at  this  time 
at  these  works  there  is  abundant  evidence  in  the  testimony 
of  government  experts  and  also  of  many  consumers,  all  of 
which  is  now  before  us.  It  was  used  for  chisels,  turning  and 
engravers'  tools,  drills,  hammers,  shears,  razors,  carpenters' 
tools,  etc.  Its  manufacture  was  continued  with  encourag- 
ing results  until  1853,  when  the  business  was  abandoned  by 
the  company.  It  had  not  proved  to  be  profitable,  partly  be- 
cause of  the  prejudice  existing  against  American  cast  steel. 
The  works  were  then  leased  for  ten  years,  during  which  time 
they  were  operated  with  varying  success.  James  R.  Thomp- 
son was  the  manager  from  1848  to  1857.  In  1863  they 
were  purchased  by  Dudley  S.  Gregory,  one  of  the  original 
stockholders,  and  were  from  that  time  managed  with  uni- 
form success  for  the  owner  by  H.  J.  Hopper.  In  1874  Mr. 
Gregory  died,  and  the  work's  descended  to  his  sons.  They 
were  afterwards  owned  by  Andrew  Williams.  In  1885  they 
were  abandoned  and*  dismantled.  At  the  time  of  their  aban- 
donment they  were  the  oldest  active  cast-steel  works  in  the 
United  States,  having  been  continually  employed  in  the  pro- 
duction of  this  kind  of  steel  since  1849. 

It  is  proper  to  add  that,  while  good  cast  steel  was  made 
after  1849  at  the  works  of  the  Adirondack  Iron  and  Steel 


392  THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 

Company,  the  product  was  not  for  many  years  of  uniform 
excellence.  Much  of  it  was  good  tool  steel,  but  much  of.it 
was  also  irregular  in  temper.  The  exact  truth  appears  to  be 
that  the  cast  steel  produced  by  this  company  during  the 
early  years  of  trial,  or  from  1849  to  1853,  was  more  uniform- 
ly excellent  than  that  which  had  been  produced  by  earlier 
or  by  cotemporary  American  steel  works,  the  Cincinnati  steel 
works  of  Garrard  Brothers  alone  excepted.  This  excellence 
was  due  to  the  superiority  of  Adirondack  iron.  Since  1852 
the  Adirondack  works  have  had  many  rivals  in  the  produc- 
tion of  crucible  cast  steel,  the  earliest  of  which  have  already 
been  described. 

James  R.  Thompson  died  on  Monday,  April  18th,  1887, 
at  his  home,  No.  128  Fifth  avenue,  New  York.  He  was 
born  at  Broadalbin,  in  Fulton  county,  New  York,  about  1822. 

Mr.  Thomas  S.  Blair,  of  Pittsburgh,  has  kindly  furnished 
us  with  the  following  reminiscences  of  the  American  steel  in- 
dustry as  it  existed  at  Pittsburgh  about  1850. 

The  blister  steel  made  at  Pittsburgh  was  sent  all  over  the  West,  and 
was  used  by  the  country  blacksmiths  for  the  pointing  of  picks,  mattocks, 
etc.,  and  for  plating  out  into  rough  hoes,  etc.  It  was  usually  made  from 
Juniata  blooms,  especially  in  the  period  anterior  to  1850.  After  that  date 
Champlain  ore  blooms  were  used  to  a  considerable  extent.  German  steel 
was  simply  blister  steel  rolled  down.  The  two  leading  applications  of 
German  steel  were  springs  and  plow-shares.  The  business  was  very  large 
at  one  time.  G.  &  J.  H.  Shoenberger  pushed  this  brand  vigorously  from 
about  1840  to  1860.  Meanwhile  quite  a  number  of  other  concerns  entered 
into  the  competition  at  various  times. 

The  Shoenberger  experiment  in  the  manufacture  of  crucible  steel  failed 
on  account  of  the  inferior  quality  of  the  product.  The  firm  were  so  con- 
fident that  no  iron  could  be  found  in  this  country  that  could  in  any  respect 
excel  the  Juniata  iron  that,  when  that  article  failed  to  produce  steel  equal 
to  that  of  Sheffield,  they  gave  up  the  manufacture  of  crucible  steel.  In  the 
light  of  the  experitnce  gained  under  the  scientific  methods  which  the  Bes- 
semer process  has  made  a  necessity  we  now  understand  that  the  Shoen- 
bergers  could  not  make  good  crucible  *steel  out  of  iron  containing  two- 
tenths  of  one  per  cent,  of  phosphorus. 

McKelvy  &  Blair  at  first  made  their  pots  out  of  Darby  and  Stanning- 
ton  clay,  imported  from  England.  The  brilliant  success  of  Joseph  Dixon, 
of  Jersey  City,  New  Jersey,  in  perfecting  the  manufacture  of  plumbago 
crucibles,  for  which  the  crucible  steel  interest  in  the  United  States  owes 
him  a  monument,  gave  to  that  firm  and  to  the  Jersey  City  steel  works  a 
very  valuable  lift.  With  these  crucibles  and  with  Adirondack  blooms  Mr. 
Thompson  made  some  excellent  steel.  Along  in  1853  and  1854  McKelvy  & 
Blair  made  steel  from  the  Adirondack  blooms  which  was  used  in  the  nail 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  393 

factory  of  G.  &  J.  H.  Shoenberger.  It  may  be  added,  also,  that  the  knives 
and  dies  of  nail-cutting  machines  afford  an  admirable  test  of  endurance  in 
tool  steel.  The  American  steel  made  from  American  iron  was  fully  up  to 
the  English  steel  in  every  particular. 

It  was  not  possible  for  McKelvy  &  Blair  to  obtain  the  Adirondack 
blooms  in  any  quantity,  and  they  had  no  other  resource  than  the  Cham- 
plain  and  Missouri  blooms,  all  of  which  produced  red-short  steel.  This, 
notwithstanding  that  drawback,  found  a  market  so  extensive  that  the  firm 
sent  to  Sheffield  and  brought  out  several  skilled  workmen,  and  the  busi- 
ness of  manufacturing  handsomely  finished  bars,  plates,  and  sheets  was 
fairly  inaugurated.  The  drawbacks,  however,  of  pioneer  operations,  chief 
among  which  was  the  abominable  English  system,  imported  with  the  skill- 
ed labor,  of  "working  to  fool  the  master,"  were  too  much  for  the  financial 
strength  of  the  firm,  and  in  1854  they  were  forced  to  drop  the  enterprise. 

The  manufacture  in  this  country  of  crucible  cast  steel  of 
the  best  grades  may  be  said  to  have  been  established  on  a 
firm  basis  after  Hussey,  Wells  &  Co.,  Park,  Brother  &  Co., 
and  Gregory  &  Co.,  in  the  years  1860, 1862,  and  1863,  respect- 
ively, succeeded  in  making  it  of  uniform  quality  as  a  regular 
product.  The  event  was  one  of  great  importance,  as  it  mark- 
ed the  establishment  in  this  country  of  a  new  industry  which 
was  destined  to  assume  large  proportions  and  to  be  of  very 
great  value.  It  met  a  want  that  had  long  been  felt,  and  dis- 
sipated the  long-standing  belief  that  this  country  possessed 
neither  the  iron  nor  the  skill  required  to  make  good  cast  steel. 
The  establishment  of  this  new  industry,  following  closely  in 
the  wake  of  our  successful  application  of  anthracite  and  bitu- 
minous coal  in  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron,  assisted  greatly 
to  advance  our  metallurgical  reputation  and  to  create  confi- 
dence in  our  future  metallurgical  possibilities.  But  none  of 
the  three  firms  named  could  have  succeeded  in  giving  to 
this  country  a  crucible-steel  industry  worthy  of  the  name  if 
the  Morrill  tariff  of  1861  and  its  supplements  had  not  en- 
couraged our  manufacturers  by  imposing  for  the  first  time  in 
our  history  really  protective  duties  on  steel  of  foreign  manu- 
facture. Our  whole  steel  industry  of  every  description  is  in- 
deed in  an  eminent  degree  the  child  of  protective  legislation. 

Sixty  years  ago,  when  the  convention  of  the  friends  of 
home  industry  met  at  New  York,  we  were  struggling  with 
the  difficulties  which  then  prevented  the  manufacture  of  blis- 
ter steel  of  best  quality ;  now  we  have  not  only  solved  that 
problem  but  thirty  years  ago  we  solved  the  greater  problem 


394  THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 

of  the  manufacture  of  crucible  steel,  and  a  few  years  later  we 
achieved  the  still  greater  triumph  of  firmly  planting  upon 
American  soil  the  Bessemer  steel  industry.  To  this  marvel- 
ous industry  we  have  added  the  manufacture  of  steel  by  the 
open-hearth,  or  Siemens-Martin,  process — a  method  of  pro- 
ducing steel  second  only  to  the  Bessemer  process  in  cheapness 
and  productiveness. 

Yet  we  might  have  had  and  should  have  had  a  crucible- 
steel  industry  at  a  much  earlier  day.  The  success  of  Garrard 
Brothers  in  manufacturing  the  best  quality  of  tool  steel  at 
Cincinnati  from  1832  to  1837,  and  of  the  Adirondack  Iron 
and  Steel  Company  in  accomplishing  the  same  result  at 
Jersey  City  in  1848  and  for  several  years  afterwards,  in  both 
instances  from  raw  materials  of  domestic  production,  proves 
that  this  country  was  long  prevented  from  having  a  credit- 
able crucible-steel  industry  because  the  injurious  effects  of 
foreign  competition  were  not  sufficiently  guarded  against  in 
the  framing  of  tariff  legislation.  The  compromise  tariff  of 
1833  closed  the  Cincinnati  ateel  works.  The  tariffs  of  1846 
and  1857  gave  no  encouragement  to  our  people  to  engage  in 
the  manufacture  of  crucible  steel.  Even  the  manufacture 
of  blister  steel  in  this  country  was  almost  destroyed  by  for- 
eign competition  prior  to  1860.  With  the  establishment  af- 
ter that  year  of  our  crucible-steel  industry  upon  a  firm  basis, 
through  protective  legislation,  there  was  no  need  to  revive  on 
a  large  scale  the  manufacture  of  the  inferior  product,  except 
as  an  adjunct  of  the  manufacture  of  crucible  steel. 

The  production  of  crucible  steel  in  the  United  States 
amounted  to  89,762  net  tons  in  1881,  which  is  the  highest 
annual  product  yet  attained.  As  late  as  1877  the  production 
was  only  40,430  tons,  which  had  not  previously  been  exceeded 
in  any  year.  The  production  of  crucible  steel  in  this  country 
has  been  practically  stationary  for  many  years,  the  failure  of 
this  branch  of  our  steel  industry  to  advance  being  chiefly 
due  to  the  competition  of  open-hearth  steel.  Bessemer  steel 
is  also  a  sharp  competitor.  The  crucible-steel  industry  of 
Great  Britain  and  the  Continent  of  Europe  has  also  made  no 
progress  for  a  number  of  years  and  for  the  same  reasons. 

Dr.  C.  G.  Hussey  was  born  near  York,  Pennsylvania,  in 
August,  1802,  and  was  in  good  health  in  August,  1891. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  395 

r 

CHAPTER   XLV. 
THE  INVENTION  OF  THE  BESSEMER  PROCESS. 

THE  Bessemer  process  for  the  manufacture  of  steel  con- 
sists in  forcing  streams  of  cold  air,  usually  under  a  high 
pressure,  into  a  pear-shaped  vessel  called  a  converter,  which 
has  been  partly  filled  with  melted  cast  iron,  by  which  opera- 
tion the  oxygen  of  the  air  combines  with  and  eliminates  the 
carbon  and  silicon  in  the  iron,  the  product  being  decarburiz- 
ed  and  desiliconized  iron.  But,  as  some  carbon  is  always  re- 
quired to  produce  steel,  a  definite  quantity  of  manganifer- 
ous  pig  iron  (spiegeleisen)  or  ferro-manganese  is  added  to  the 
contents  of  the  converter  while  they  are  still  in  a  state  of  fu- 
sion, by  which  addition  the  requisite  amount  of  carbon  is  ob- 
tained, while  the  manganese  combines  with  and  liberates  the 
oxygen  that  has  united  with  the  iron  during  the  blast.  The 
product  is  Bessemer  steel,  of  a  quality  or  temper  correspond- 
ing to  the  character  and  proportions  of  the  materials  used. 
A  distinguishing  feature  of  the  Bessemer  process  consists  in 
the  entire  absence  of  any  fuel  whatever  in  converting  the 
already  melted  cast  iron  into  steel,  the  carbon  and  silicon  in 
the  iron  combining  with  the  oxygen  of  the  atmospheric 
blast  to  produce  an  intensely  high  temperature.  The  Besse- 
mer converter  holds  from  five  to  twenty  tons.  The  charge 
of  cast  iron  which  it  receives  preliminary  to  a  conversion, 
or  blow,  may  be  supplied  directly  from  a  blast '  furnace  or 
from  a  cupola  in  which  pig  iron  has  been  melted.  The  latter 
method  is  generally  employed  in  both  Europe  and  the  United 
States,  although  the  direct  method  is  employed  at  some  of  the 
large  Bessemer  works  in  our  own  country. 

Sir  Henry  Bessemer,  of  London,  the  generally  accredited 
inventor  of  the  process  which  bears  his  name,  commenced  in 
1854  to  experiment  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  for  an  im- 
proved gun.  "  In  the  course  of  his  experiments,"  says  Mr.  J. 
S.  Jeans,  in  his  comprehensive  work  on  Steel,  "  it  dawned  up- 
on him  that  cast  iron  might  be  rendered  malleable  by  the  in- 
troduction oi  atmospheric  air  into  the  fluid  metal."  In  1855 


396  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

and  1856  patents  were  granted  to  Mr.  Bessemer  for  this  dis- 
covery, but  it  was  not  until  1858  that  complete  success  was 
achieved  by  him  in  the  conversion  of  cast  iron  into  cast  steel. 
Nor  was  this  success  achieved  without  the  assistance  of  oth- 
ers, Robert  Forester  Mushet,  of  Cheltenham,  England,  and 
Goran  Fredrik  Goransson,  of  Sandviken,  Sweden,  contributing 
greatly  to  this  result.  Without  the  assistance  rendered  by  Mr. 
Mushet,  of  which  we  shall  speak  hereafter,  Mr.  Bessemer's  in- 
vention would  not  have  been  of  much  value.  It  may  also 
be  added  that  many  and  valuable  improvements  have  been 
made  in  the  application  of  the  Bessemer  process  since  its 
introduction  in  Europe  and  America.  These  improvements, 
however,  detract  nothing  from  the  honor  that  is  due  to  Sir 
Henry  Bessemer,  since  it  is  true  of  all  valuable  inventions 
that  their  value  is  increased  by  the  ingenuity  and  skill  of 
those  who  use  them.  In  addition  to  discovering  that  melt- 
ed cast  iron  could  be  decarburized  and  desiliconized  and  ren- 
dered malleable  by  blowing  cold  air  through  it  at  a  high 
pressure,  Sir  Henry  is  entitled  to  the  whole  credit  of  invent- 
ing the  wonderful  machinery  by  which  this  discovery  has 
been  applied  to  the  rapid  production  of  large  quantities  of 
Bessemer  steel.  The  purely  engineering  feats  accomplished 
by  him  in  the  development  of  his  invention  were  essential 
to  its  success,  and  they  amaze  us  by  their  novelty  and  mag- 
nitude. Those  who  have  never  seen  this  machinery  in  op- 
eration can  form  but  a  faint  idea  of  its  exquisite  adaptation 
to  the  purposes  to  be  accomplished.  A  Bessemer  converter, 
weighing  with  its  contents  from  twenty  to  forty  tons,  is  moved 
at  will  on  its  axis  by  machinery  controlled  by  the  touch  of 
a  man  or  boy,  and  receives,  in  response  to  the  same  touch, 
a  blast  so  powerful  that  every  particle  of  its  many  tons  of 
metallic  contents  is  heated  to  the  highest  temperature  ever 
known  in  the  mechanic  arts.  The  honor  of  inventing  this 
machinery  is  all  claimed  for  Sir  Henry  Bessemer. 

In  1856  Mr.  Bessemer  obtained  in  this  country  two  pat- 
ents for  his  invention,  but  was  immediately  confronted  by  a 
claim  of  priority  of  invention  preferred  by  William  Kelly, 
an  ironmaster  of  Eddyville,  Kentucky,  but  a  native  of  Pitts- 
burgh, Pennsylvania.  This  claim  was  heard  by  the  Commis- 
sioner of  Patents  and  its  justice  was  conceded,  the  Commis- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  397 

sioner  granting  to  Mr.  Kelly  a  patent  which  at  once  operated 
as  an  impediment  to  the  use  of  the  patents  granted  to  Mr.  Bes- 
semer. The  effect  of  this  action  by  the  Commissioner  was  to 
prevent  for  several  years  any  serious  effort  from  being  made 
to  introduce  the  Bessemer  process  into  this  country.  As  a 
matter  of  interest  and  of  history  we  here  give,  before  pro- 
ceeding further,  a  complete  account  of  Mr.  Kelly's  invention, 
prepared  for  these  pages  by  Mr.  Kelly  himself. 

In  1846  I  purchased,  in  connection  with  my  brother,  John  F.  Kelly,  a 
large  iron  property  in  Lyon  county,  Kentucky,  known  as  the  Eddyville 
iron  works ;  and  the  beginning  of  1847  found  the  firm  of  Kelly  &  Co.  fairly 
under  way,  making  pig  metal  and  charcoal  blooms.  Our  forge  contained 
ten  forge  fires  and  two  large  finery,  or  run-out,  fires. 

To  the  processes  of  manufacture  I  gave  my  first  and  most  serious  at- 
tention ;  and,  after  close  observation  and  study,  I  conceived  the  idea  that, 
after  the  metal  was  melted,  the  use  of  fuel  would  be  unnecessary — that  the 
heat  generated  by  the  union  of  the  oxygen  of  the  air  with  the  carbon  of 
the  metal  would  be  sufficient  to  accomplish  the  refining  and  decarboniz- 
ing of  the  iron.  I  devised  several  plans  for  testing  this  idea  of  forcing  in- 
to the  fluid  metal  powerful  blasts  of  air;  and,  after  making  drawings  of  the 
same,  showed  them  to  my  forgemen,  not  one  of  whom  could  agree  with  me, 
all  believing  that  I  would  chill  the  metal,  and  that  my  experiment  would 
end  in  failure.  I  finally  fixed  on  a  plan  of  furnace  which  I  thought  would 
answer  my  purpose.  This  consisted  of  a  small  blast  furnace,  about  12  feet 
high,  having  a  hearth  and  bosh  like  a  common  blast  furnace.  In  this  I  ex- 
pected to  produce  decarbonized  metal  from  the  iron  ore ;  but,  if  I  failed  in 
this,  I  could  resort  to  pig  metal  and  thereby  have  good  fluid  metal  to  blow 
into.  The  novelty  of  this  furnace  was  that  it  had  two  tuyeres,  one  above 
the  other.  The  upper  tuyere  was  to  melt  the  stock ;  the  lower  one  was  fix- 
ed in  the  hearth  near  the  bottom,  and  intended  to  conduct  the  air-blast  in- 
to the  metal.  That  portion  of  the  hearth  in  which  the  lower  tuyere  was 
placed  was  so  arranged  as  to  part  from  the  upper  portion,  and  consisted  of 
a  heavy  cast-iron  draw,  lined  inside  with  fire-brick,  so  that,  when  the  iron 
was  blown  to  nature  by  the  lower  tuyere,  the  draw  could  be  run  from  under 
the  hearth,  and  the  iron  taken  out,  carried  to  the  hammer,  and  forged. 

I  began  my  experiments  with  this  furnace  in  October,  1847,  but  found 
it  impossible  to  give  it  sufficient  attention,  as  I  had  then  commenced  to 
build  a  new  blast  furnace,  the  Suwannee,  on  our  property.  This  occupied 
so  much  of  my  time  that  I  had  but  little  left  in  which  to  attend  to  my  new 
process.  In  the  year  1851,  having  finished  our  new  blast  furnace,  I  found 
myself  more  at  leisure,  and  again  directed  my  attention  to  my  experiments  ; 
and,  on  looking  for  the  cause  of  failure  in  my  experimental  furnace,  found 
that  my  chief  trouble  lay  in  the  melting  department,  not  in  the  more  im- 
portant matter  of  blowing  into  the  iron,  so  that  the  question  presented  it- 
self to  my  mind,  Why  complicate  my  experiments  by  trying  to  make  pig 
metal  in  a  furnace  not  at  all  suited  to  the  business  ?  Why  not  abandon  al- 
together the  melting  department  and  try  my  experiments  at  our  new  blast 


398  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

furnace,  where  I  could  have  the  metal  already  melted  and  in  good  condi- 
tion for  blowing  into  ?  I  fully  believed  that  I  could  make  malleable  iron 
by  this  process.  In  my  first  efforts  with  this  object  in  view  I  built  a  furnace 
consisting  of  a  square  brick  abutment,  having  a  circular  chamber  inside, 
the  bottom  of  which  was  concave  like  a  moulder's  ladle.  In  the  bottom 
was  fixed  a  circular  tile  of  fire-clay,  perforated  for  tuyeres.  Under  this  tile 
was  an  air-chamber,  connected  by  pipes  with  the  blowing  engine.  This  is 
substantially  the  plan  now  used  in  the  Bessemer  converter. 

The  first  trial  of  this  furnace  was  very  satisfactory.  The  iron  was  well 
refined  and  decarbonized— at  least  as  well  as  by  the  finery  fire.  This  fact 
wras  admitted  by  all  the  forgemen  who  examined  it.  The  blowing  was  usu- 
ally continued  from  five  to  ten  minutes,  whereas  the  finery  fire  required 
over  an  hour.  Here  was  a  great  saving  of  time  and  fuel,  as  well  as  great 
encouragement  to  work  the  process  out  to  perfection.  I  was  not  satisfied 
/with  making  refined  or  run-out  metal ;  my  object  was  to  make  malleable 
iron.  In  attempting  this  I  made,  in  the  course  of  the  following  eighteen 
months,  a  variety  of  experiments.  I  built  a  suitable  hot-blast  oven ;  but, 
after  a  few  trials,  abandoned  it,  finding  the  cold-blast  preferable,  for  many 
reasons.  After  numerous  trials  of  this  furnace  I  found  that  I  could  make 
refined  metal,  suitable  for  the  charcoal  forge  fire,  without  any  difficulty, 
and,  when  the  blast  was  continued  for  a  longer  period,  the  iron  would  oc- 
casionally be  somewhat  malleable.  At  one  time,  on  trying  the  iron,  to  my 
great  surprise,  I  found  the  iron  would  forge  well,  and  it  was  pronounced  as 
good  as  any  charcoal  forge  iron.  I  had  a  piece  of  this  iron  forged  into  a  bar 
four  feet  long  and  three-eighths  of  an  inch  square.  I  kept  this  bar  for  exhi- 
bition, and  was  frequently  asked  for  a  small  piece,  which  I  readily  gave  un- 
til it  was  reduced  to  a  length  of  a  few  inches.  This  piece  I  have  still  in 
my  possession.  It  is  the  first  piece  of  malleable  iron  or  steel  ever  made  by 
the  pneumatic  process.  The  variability  of  results  in  the  working  of  my  ex- 
perimental furnace  was  then  a  mystery  which  is  now  explained.  An  anal- 
ysis having  since  been  made  of  all  the  ore  deposits  of  Suwannee  furnace 
they  were  found  to  embrace  cold-short,  red-short,  and  neutral  ores.  Some 
of  the  deposits  showed  a  large  percentage  of  manganese. 

I  now  decided  that,  if  I  could  not  succeed  in  making  malleable  iron,  I 
could  turn  my  invention  to  practical  account  by  putting  up  a  furnace  of  suf- 
ficient capacity  to  supply  our  forge  with  refined  or  run-out  metal,  and  at  the 
same  time  continue  my  experiments  as  before.  The  difficulty  here  was  in 
my  blast.  The  furnace  engine,  though  large  and  powerful,  would  not  give 
over  5  pounds'  pressure  to  the  square  inch.  To  overcome  this  difficulty  I 
built  a  converting  vessel  and  placed  it  in  the  pig-bed  convenient  to  the  tap- 
ping-hole of  the  hearth.  This  furnace  was  circular,  built  of  boiler-plate 
iron,  was  about  5  feet  high  and  18  inches  inside  diameter ;  and,  instead  of 
blowing  up  through  the  bottom,  the  blast  was  applied  to  the  sides,  above 
the  bottom,  through  four  three-quarter-inch  tuyeres.  Experience  soon 
proved  that  a  single  tuyere,  an  inch  in  diameter,  answered  my  purpose 
;  best.  In  this  vessel  I  could  refine  fifteen  hundredweight  of  metal  in  from 
five  to  ten  minutes.  Should  the  blast  prove  weak,  as  was  often  the  case, 
the  tuyeres  could  be  snuffed  in  the  same  way  as  in  a  finery  fire.  In  this 
way  a  heavy  charge  could  be  worked  with  a  weak  blast.  This  furnace  had 
an  opening  in  the  side,  about  nine  inches  square,  three  feet  from  the  bot- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  399 

torn,  to  run  in  the  metal ;  also  a  tap-hole  to  let  out  the  metal  into  a  set  of 
iron  moulds  such  as  are  used  about  finery  fires.  This  furnace  was  found  to 
answer  a  valuable  purpose,  supplying  a  cheap  method  of  making  run-out 
metal,  and,  after  trying  it  a  few  days,  we  entirely  dispensed  with  the  old 
and  troublesome  run-out  fires. 

Our  blooms  were  in  high  repute,  and  were  almost  entirely  used  for 
making  boiler  plates,  so  that  many  steamboats  on  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi 
rivers  were  using  boilers  made  of  iron  treated  by  this  process  some  years 
before  it  was  brought  out  in  England.  My  process  was  known  to  every 
iron-maker  in  the  Cumberland  river  iron  district  as  Kellyj  air-boiling  proc- 
ess. The  reason  why  I  did  not  apply  for  a  patent  for  it  sooner  than  I  did 
was  that  I  flattered  myself  I  would  soon  make  it  the  successful  process  I  at 
first  endeavored  to  achieve,  namely,  a  process  for  making  malleable  iron 
and  steel.  In  1857  I  applied  for  a  patent,  as  soon  as  I  heard  that  other  men 
were  following  the  same  line  of  experiments  in  England ;  and,  although 
Mr.  Bessemer  was  a  few  days  before  me  in  obtaining  a  patent,  I  was  grant- 
ed an  interference,  and  the  case  was  heard  by  the  Commissioner  of  Patents, 
who  decided  that  I  was  the  first  inventor  of  this  process,  now  known  as  the 
Bessemer  process,  and  a  patent  was  granted  me  over  Mr.  Bessemer. 

It  will  be  seen  that  Mr.  Kelly  claims  for  himself  the  dis- 
covery of  the  pneumatic  principle  of  the  Bessemer  process 
several  years  before  it  dawned  upon  the  mind  of  Mr.  Besse- 
mer. The  validity  of  this  claim  can  not  be  impeached.  But 
it  must  also  be  said  that  Mr.  Bessemer,  with  the  aid  of  Mr. 
Mushet,  successfully  employed  this  principle  in  the  produc- 
tion of  steel  and  that  Mr.  Kelly  did  not.  The  Kelly  process 
produced  refined  iron  of  good  quality.  Furthermore,  the  ma- 
chinery with  which  Mr.  Kelly  operated  his  process  was  not 
calculated  to  produce  rapidly  or  at  all  large  masses  of  even 
refined  iron ;  whereas  Mr.  Bessemer's  machinery  was  successful 
after  it  was  perfected  in  producing  steel  in  large  quantities 
and  with  great  rapidity. 

Mr.  Kelly  claimed  that  his  process,  if  successful  in  con- 
nection with  the  limited  operations  of  the  refinery  forge  at- 
tached to  his  blast  furnace  at  Eddyville,  would  be  applicable 
also  to  the  refining  of  iron  for  rolling  mills,  and  would  take 
the  place  of  puddling.  Some  experiments  with  this  end  in 
view  were  made  at  the  Cambria  iron  works,  at  Johnstown, 
Pennsylvania,  in  1857  and  1858,  in  a  converting  vessel  simi- 
lar to  that  now  used  in  the  Bessemer  process.  They  were  so 
far  successful  that  Mr.  Kelly  wrote  from  Johnstown  on  the 
29th  of  June,  1858,  that  he  had  not  "  the  slightest  difficulty 
in  converting  crude  pig  iron  into  refined  plate  metal  by  blow- 


400  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

ing  into  it  for  about  fifteen  to  twenty-five  minutes."  These 
experiments  were  not,  however,  continued.  Mr.  Robert  W. 
Hunt,  in  his  History  of  the  Bessemer  Manufacture  in  America, 
read  before  the  American  Institute  of  Mining  Engineers  in 
1876,  says  that  at  Johnstown  Mr.  Kelly  "  met  with  the  usual 
number  of  encouraging  failures."  The  converting  vessel  used 
by  Mr.  Kelly  at  Johnstown  was  built  by  himself.  Mr.  Hunt 
says  that  it  was  "  the  first  Bessemer  converter  ever  erected  in 
America."  We  give  this  honor  to  the  Eddyville  converter. 

Mr.  Bessemer's  process  having  failed  in  1855  and  1856 
to  produce  any  successful  result  in  the  manufacture  of  steel, 
Robert  F.  Mushet,  then  of  the  Forest  steel  works,  and  late  of 
Cheltenham,  England,  on  the  22d  of  September,  1856,  took 
out  a  patent  for  his  process  of  adding  to  melted  cast  iron, 
which  had  been  decarburized  and  desiliconized  by  a  pneu- 
matic blast,  a  melted  triple  compound  of  iron,  carbon,  and 
manganese,  of  which  compound  spiegeleisen  was  the  cheap- 
est and  most  convenient  form.  The  addition  of  from  one  to 
five  per  cent,  of  this  compound  to  the  cast  iron  mentioned  at 
once  overcame  the  obstacle  which  had  been  fatal  to  the  suc- 
cess of  Mr.  Bessemer's  invention.  Mr.  Bessemer  had  decar- 
burized and  desiliconized  melted  cast  iron,  but  he  had  not 
(been  able  to  retain  or  restore  the  small  quantity  of  carbon 
•  that  was  necessary  to  produce  steel,  and  in  the  oxygen  of 
his  powerful  blast  he  had  given  to  the  contents  of  his  con- 
verter an  element  which  prevented  the  production  of  even 
good  iron.  Mr.  Mushet's  invention  regulated  the  supply  of 
carbon  and  eliminated  the  oxygen.  It  must  be  added  that, 
even  with  the  assistance  of  Mr.  Mushet's  invention,  only  pig 
iron  which  is  practically  free  from  phosphorus  was  found  to 
be  adapted  to  the  Bessemer  process  as  it  was  originally  em- 
ployed. The  basis  modification  of  the  Bessemer  process,  an 
invention  of  later  years,  permits  the  use  of  pig  iron  that  is 
high  in  phosphorus. 

Early  in  1857,  pending  the  publication  of  Mr.  Mushet's 
patent,  and  during  the  erection  for  him  of  a  blowing  appara- 
tus and  small  converter,  provided  by  the  late  Samuel  Holden 
Blackwell,  of  Dudley,  Mr.  Mushet  obtained  from  the  Ebbw 
Vale  Iron  Company  a  supply  of  Bessemerized  hematite  cast 
iron.  This  he  melted  in  crucible-steel  melting  pots,  adding 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  401 

to  the  forty-four  pounds'  charge  of  each  pot,  when  melted, 
two  pounds  of  melted  spiegeleisen.  From  this  mixture  in- 
gots of  from  500  to  800  pounds  were  cast,  and  one  of  these 
ingots  was  rolled  at  the  Ebbw  Vale  works  into  a  double-  / 
headed  rail,  which  was  sent  to  Derby  railway  station,  on  the 
Midland  Railroad,  to  be  laid  down  there  at  a  place  where 
iron  rails  had  sometimes  to  be  renewed  within  three_months. 
This  was  early  in  1857.  Sixteen  years  afterwards,  in  June, 
1873,  the  rail  referred  to  .was  taken  out.  This  was  the  first 
Bessemer  steel  rail  ever  laid  doivn.  During  its  lifetime  about 
1,250,000  trains  and  a  like  number  of  detached  engines  and 
tenders  passed  over  it. 

Having  obtained  the  blowing  apparatus  and  converter 
already  mentioned  Mr.  Mushet  was  enabled  in  1857  to  cast 
small  ingots  of  tool  steel  by  the  direct  Bessemer  process  with 
the  addition  of  spiegeleisen  by  his  own  process.  The  first 
charge  of  Bessemer  steel  ever  made  with  the  addition  of  spie- 
geleisen was  tapped  from  the  small  converter  at  Mr.  Mush- 
et's  Forest  steel  works  by  a  young  workman,  William  Phelps. 
Soon  afterwards  Bessemer  steel  was  produced  in  England  in 
commercial  quantities  by  Mr.  Bessemer  and  his  business  as- 
sociates. 

At  the  international  meeting  of  the  Iron  and  Steel  Insti- 
tute of  Great  Britain,  the  Verein  deutseher  Eisenhilttenleute,  and 
the  American  Institute  of  Mining  Engineers,  held  in  the 
hall  of  the  Carnegie  Library  in  Allegheny  City,  Pennsylva- 
nia, in  October,  1890,  Sir  James  Kitson,  president  of  the 
British  Institute,  delivered  the  opening  address.  In  his  re- 
marks Sir  James  said  that  Sir  Henry  Bessemer  had  prepar- 
ed, at  his  request,  an  account  of  his  discovery  of  the  proc- 
ess of  manufacturing  Bessemer  steel.  A  letter  in  Sir  Henry 
Bessemer's  own  handwriting  was  then  read.  The  letter  is 
dated  at  Denmark  Hill,  September  10, 1890,  and  is  addressed 
to  Sir  James  Kitson.  As  a  history  of  the  successive  steps 
by  which  Sir  Henry's  great  invention  was  developed  and 
perfected  it  is  very  disappointing.  We  look  in  vain,  for  in- 
stance, in  its  elaborate  and  detailed  statements  for  any  rec- 
ognition whatever  of  Mr.  Mushet's  invaluable  aid  in  perfect- 
ing the  Bessemer  process  ;  even  Mr.  Mushet's  name  is  not 
mentioned. 


402  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Mr.  Bessemer's  first  public  account  of  his  invention  was 
read  by  him  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  British  Associa- 
tion for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  held  at  Cheltenham, 
in  August,  1856.  It  was  entitled  :  "  On  the  Manufacture  of 
Malleable  Iron  and  Steel  without  Fuel."  His  first  English 
patent  in  connection  with  his  great  invention  was  granted 
on  October  17,  1855.  The  paper  read  at  Cheltenham  in  1856 
is  clear  and  satisfactory. 

Mr.  Mushet's  English  patent  for  the  use  of  spiegeleisen  as 
a  recarhurjzer  was  permitted  to  lapse  because  of  his  poverty 
and  other  causes  which  he  could  not  control  and  before  he 
had  received  any  pecuniary  benefit  from  his  invention.  Mr. 
Mushet  says  of  this  turning  point  in  his  life :  "  So  my  proc- 
ess became  public  property,  and  Mr.  Bessemer  had  a  perfect 
right  to  make  use  of  it,  and  his  prosperity  dated  from  that 
period."  Mr.  Bessemer  afterwards  recognized  his  indebtedness 
to  Mr.  Mushet's  invention  by  allowing  him  an  annuity  of 
£300,  and  the  Iron  and  Steel  Institute  of  Great  Britain  in 
1876  awarded  to  him  the  Bessemer  gold  medal  for  that  year 
in  recognition  of  the  great  value  of  his  invention.  Mr.  Bes- 
semer's profits  from  his  own  invention  have  been  enormous. 
In  1879  Mr.  Jeans  said  that  "from  first  to  last  Bessemer's 
patents  have  brought  him  royalties  to  the  value  of  over 
£1,057,000."  Mr.  Jeans  also  gives  some  interesting  particu- 
lars concerning  the  profits  of  the  first  company  that  was  or- 
ganized in  England  to  work  the  Bessemer  process.  Mr.  Bes- 
semer was  the  projector  of  this  company  and  a  member  of 
it,  his  associates  being  his  earlier  partner,  Mr.  Robert  Longs- 
don,  his  brother-in-law,  Mr.  Allen,  and  William  and  John  Gal- 
loway of  Manchester.  The  works  were  located  at  Sheffield. 
Mr.  Jeans'  statement  is  as  follows.  It  is  confirmed  in  the 
letter  of  Sir  Henry  Bessemer,  dated  September  10,  1890. 

On  the  expiration  of  the  fourteen  years'  term  of  partnership  of  this 
firm,  the  works,  which  had  been  greatly  increased  from  time  to  time,  en- 
tirely out  of  revenues,  were  sold  by  private  contract  for  exactly  twenty-four 
times  the  amount  of  the  whole  subscribed  capital,  notwithstanding  that  the 
firm  had  divided  in  profits  during  the  partnership  a  sum  equal  to  fifty-sev- 
en times  the  gross  capital,  so  that  by  the  mere  commercial  working  of  the 
process,  apart  from  the  patent,  each  of  the  five  partners  retired,  after  four- 
teen years,  from  the  Sheffield  works  with  eighty-one  times  the  amount  of 
his  subscribed  capital,  or  an  average  of  nearly  cent,  per  cent,  every  two 
months — a  result  probably  unprecedented  in  the  annals  of  commerce. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  403  - 

With  the  exception  of  the  annuity  and  the  gold  medal 
mentioned  above  Mr.  Mushet's  profits  and  honors  from  his 
great  invention  have  been  inconsiderable.  He  lived  and  died 
a  poor  man.  In  a  monograph  which  he  printed  in  1883  in 
advocacy  of  his  own  claims  to  recognition  as  an  inventor  of 
the  process  which  should  rightly  be  called  the  Bessemer- 
Mushet  process  he  makes  the  following  pathetic  complaint 
of  the  ingratitude  of  his  countrymen. 

My  invention  and  Sir  Henry  Bessemer's  have  made  a  great  mark  in 
the  world,  a  very  great  mark  indeed ;  so  great  that  I  have  sometimes 
thought  that  the  Iron  and  Steel  Institute  might  have  made  me  an  honorary 
member  and  the  Eoyal  Society  an  F.  R.  S.,  or  that  Her  Gracious  Majesty 
might  have  revived  my  ancestors'  title  of  knights  banneret,  which  was  for- 
feited during  the  rebellion  of  Montrose.  At  all  events  the  vast  industry 
of  steel  makers,  including  his  Grace  the  Duke  of  Devonshire,  who  gets 
£12,000  per  annum  out  of  my  little  process,  might  at  least  accord  me  a 
vote  of  thanks  for  the  wealth  my  invention  has  brought  to  them.  I  should 
value  any  of  these  honors  very  much,  es  I  have  valued  the  gold  medal  so 
kindly  presented  to  me  by  the  Iron  and  Steel  Institute  and  Sir  Henry  Bes- 
semer in  1876. 

In  looking  back  twenty-six  years,  to  the  time  when  Mr.  Bessemer's 
process  and  mine  were  made  the  subject  of  patents,  I  may  observe  that 
the  loss  of  my  patent,  through  the  inconceivable  neglect  of  the  trustees  in 
whose  hands  it  was  placed,  left  me  without  any  share  in  the  enormous 
royalties  reaped  from  the  success  of  our  joint  processes.  In  consequence 
of  this  the  world,  true  to  itself,  has  done  its  best  to  ignore  me  and  my 
process.  The  world  shuns  the  man  who  does  not  get  the  money. 

Like  the  majority  of  inventors,  I  have  benefited  others  but  not  my- 
self, and  I  have  been  very  hardly  dealt  with,  as  much  so,  perhaps,  as  any 
inventor  has  ever  yet  been;  but  I  have  accepted  it  all  cheerfully  and 
without  repining,  though  I  have  often  felt  sorry  for  those  who,  in  their 
dealings  with  me,  forsook  the  paths  of  honor  and  integrity  and  took  an 
unworthy  advantage  of  me. 

Mr.  C.  I.  Valentine,  of  the  Moss  Bay  Iron  Company,  is  the  only  mem- 
ber of  the  iron  trade  from  wrhom  since  the  loss  of  my  patent  I  ever  re- 
ceived either  kindness  or  sympathy ;  and  Mr.  Samuel  Osborn,  of  the  Clyde 
Steel  Works,  is  the  only  steel  manufacturer  who  has  dealt  honorably  and 
kindly  with  me :  and  to  both  these  gentlemen,  and  their  respective  firms, 
I  tender  thus  publicly  my  sincere  thanks.  I  do  not,  of  course,  class  Sir 
Henry  Bessemer  as  a  steel  manufacturer,  but  as  an  inventor,  who  has 
called  into  successful  activity  a  great  many  steel  manufacturers.  For  what 
he  has  kindly  done  for  me  I  thank  him  also  very  much. 

The  British  Government  has  conferred  upon  Mr.  Besse- 
mer the  honor  of  knighthood  in  recognition  of  the  value  of 
his  invention  of  an  official  stamp,  and  he  is  now  Sir  Henry 
Bessemer  by  virtue  of  that  honor. 


~  404  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

In  1858  Mr.  Goran  Fredrik  Goransson,  a  Swedish  iron- 
master, was  enabled  by  using  pure  manganesic  Swedish  pig 
iron  to  produce  Bessemer  steel  of  excellent  quality  ivithout 
adding  spiegelpisen,  the  iron  used  being  practically  free  from 
phosphorus  and  sulphur  but  having  the  requisite  percentage 
of  manganese.  Except  in  rare  instances,  when  pure  manga- 
nesic pig  iron  can  be  obtained,  Mr.  Mushet's  process  still  con- 
tinues to  be  absolutely  essential  to  the  manufacture  of  Besse- 
mer steel.  We  give  below  Mr.  Goransson's  own  account  of 
the  important  part  taken  by  him  in  the  development  of  the 
Bessemer  process,  which  account,  in  his  own  handwriting,  is 
now  in  our  possession.  This  account  was  given  to  Professor 
Richard  Akerman,  of  Stockholm,  who  had  at  our  request  in 
1879  addressed  a  letter  to  Mr.  Goransson  requesting  a  state- 
ment of  the  facts  which  are  of  such  great  historical  value. 

PROFESSOR  RICHARD  AKERMAN,  Stockholm. 

DEAR  SIR  :  In  conformity  to  your  friendly  letter  of  the  2d  instant  I 
will  try  to  give  you  in  English  a  short  sketch  of  the  difficulties  I  had  in 
commencing  with  the  Bessemer  method  and  how  I  at  last  overcame  them. 

My  full  name  is  Goran  Fredrik  Goransson.  I  bought  part  of  the  Swed- 
ish Bessemer  patent  in  June,  1857,  after  a  conversation  with,  then,  Mr.  Hen- 
ry Bessemer,  and  on  his  promise  that  he  would  arrange  the  necessary  plant 
and  send  over  an  engineer  for  starting  the  manufacture  in  accordance  with 
his  patents. 

In  the  autumn  he  sent  over  his  plant,  namely,  a  converter  of  his  con- 
struction and  a  steam  blast  engine  constructed  by  Messrs.  Galloway  &  Co., 
of  Manchester,  accompanied  by  an  engineer  for  conducting  the  manufact- 
ure. We  started  in  November,  but  we  soon  found  that  the  converter  was 
impracticable,  difficult  to  handle,  and  giving  no  good  result.  We  then  con- 
structed a  fixed  converter  on  the  same  principle  as  the  small  fixed  vessel 
which  Mr.  Bessemer  used  for  his  first  experiments  at  Baxter  House,  in  Lon- 
don, but,  according  to  Mr.  Bessemer's  advice,  with  two  rows  of  tuyeres,  six  in 
each  row,  the  lower  row  at  the  bottom  of  the  converter  and  the  other  some 
inches  above ;  but  the  result  was  not  good.  Mr.  Bessemer  then  advised  us 
to  augment  the  pressure  of  the  blast,  and  to  effect  this  we  took  away  the 
upper  tuyeres  and  used  only  the  six  below,  each  about  five-eighths  of  an 
inch  in  diameter,  and  we  then  sometimes  succeeded,  particularly  during  the 
cold,  dry,  winter  days,  in  getting  malleable  ingots,  but  very  irregular  and 
generally  full  of  slag.  The  engineer,  not  knowing  anything  more  than  my- 
self, "then  left  the  works. 

We  tried  every  possible  means  of  augmenting  the  pressure  of  the  blast 
by  reducing  the  diameter  of  the  tuyeres  and  using  smaller  charges,  as  we 
had  reached  the  limit  of  the  pressure  which  could  be  produced  by  the  blast 
engine,  but  all  with  less  and  less  success,  and,  on  the  point  of  giving  up  the 
experiments,  I  resolved,  in  spite  of  all  advisers,  to  diminish  the  pressure  and 
instead  use  a  larger  quantity  of  air.  For  this  purpose  we  put  all  the  twelve 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  405 

tuyeres  in  one  line  at  the  bottom  of  the  converter,  and  augmented  the  diam- 
eter of  them  to  seven-eighths  of  an  inch,  to  see  what  change  they  would 
produce.  The  result  was  astonishing.  The  temperature  of  the  fluid  steel  was 
very  much  raised,  the  slag  came  up  on  the  top  beautifully,  the  ingots  turned 
out  perfectly  even  in  temper,  free  from  slag,  and  extremely  malleable,  more 
so  than  any  iron  made  on  the  old  process.  The  first  charge  with  the  con- 
verter so  arranged  was  made  on  the  18th  of  July,  1858,  and  from  that  date 
the  Bessemer  method  can  be  regarded  as  started. 

I  sent  fifteen  tons  of  ingots  to  a  firm  in  Sheffield  and  fifteen  tons  to 
Messrs.  Henry  Bessemer  &  Co.'s  works  at  the  same  place,  and  went  over  to 
England  in  September  to  have  them  tried.  I  found  then  that  Mr.  Bessemer 
had  not  succeeded,  but  had  to  granulate  in  water  the  steel  he  got  from  the 
converter  and  afterwards  remelt  it  in  crucibles.  As  such  a  process  could  not 
give  any  profit  the  friends  who  assisted  him  were  losing  all  hope  of  success, 
but  they  all  came  down  to  Sheffield  to  see  my  ingots  tried  before  they  final- 
ly gave  up  this  business.  The  Sheffield  firm,  thinking  it  their  interest  not 
to  forward  the  Bessemer  method,  got  the  whole  lot  burnt  at  the  wash  weld- 
ing, but  the  fifteen  tons  hammered  and  tilted  at  Messrs.  Henry  Bessemer  & 
Co.'s  works  turned  out  to  full  satisfaction  after  having  been  tried  for  knives, 
scissors,  razors,  other  tools,  and  plates. 

The  result  of  these  trials  has  led  to  the  further  improvement  and  to 
the  present  extension  of  the  Bessemer  process,  for  which  Mr.  Bessemer  and 
others  have  done  much,  but  Professor  Viktor  Eggertz's  practical  invention 
to  find  out  the  percentage  of  carbon  in  the  steel  has  overcome  the  great- 
est difficulty  then  remaining.  Faithfully  Yours,  G.  F.  GORANSSON. 

SANDVIKENS  JERNVERKS,  AKTIE  BOLAG,  SANDVIKEN,  November  6, 1879. 

An  important  improvement  upon  the  Bessemer  process  is 
the  work  of  two  English  chemists,  Sidney  Gilchrist  Thomas 
and  Percy  C.  Gilchrist,  both  of  London.  It  renders  possi- 
ble the  use  in  the  converter  of  cast  iron  which  contains  a 
large  percentage  of  phosphorus,  no  method  of  eliminating 
from  it  this  hostile  element  having  previously  been  in  use. 
The  first  patent  of  Mr.  Thomas,  the  principal  inventor  of  this 
successful  method  of  dephosphorizing  iron,  is  dated  Novem- 
ber 22,  1877,  and  relates  to  the  application  of  a  lime  lining 
to  the  Bessemer  converter  and  to  the  use  of  lime  in  combina- 
tion with  its  melted  contents.  The  Thomas-Gilchrist  process 
is  now  employed  with  success  in  the  manufacture  of  Besse- 
mer steel  in  Great  Britain,  France,  Germany,  Austria,  Bel- 
gium, and  Russia,  but  it  has  met  with  the  greatest  favor  in 
Germany.  It  has  been  introduced  in  this  country  in  con- 
nection with  the  Bessemer  process,  but  only  in  a  small  way. 

Mr.  George  J.  Snelus,  of  England,  claims  to  have  solved 
the  problem  of  dephosphorization  in  the  same  way  that 
Thomas  and  Gilchrist  solved  it,  and  some  time  before  their 


406  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

attention  was  turned  to  the  subject.  His  invention  was  pat- 
ented in  1872.  A  consolidation  of  his  interests  with  those 
of  Thomas  and  Gilchrist  was  effected  without  difficulty. 
Mr.  Jacob  Reese,  of  Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania,  also  claims  pri- 
ority over  Messrs.  Thomas  and  Gilchrist  in  the  invention  of 
the  basic  process,  and  this  claim  was  long  a  subject  of  con- 
troversy in  the  United  States.  It  rests  upon  patents  which 
/  were  granted  to  Mr.  Reese  in  this  country  in  1866.  These 
patents  and  the  Thomas-Gilchrist  patents  were  purchased  in 
1879  for  this  country  by  the  Bessemer  Steel  Company  Lim- 
ited, but  controversy  concerning  the  exact  scope  and  signifi- 
cance of  Mr.  Reese's  patents  did  not  end  until  1888,  when  the 
ownership  of  all  the  patents  for  the  United  States  was  finally 
vested  in  the  company  mentioned. 

Mr.  James  Henderson,  of  New  York  city,  made  many  in- 
teresting experiments  in  the  use  of  lime  as  a  dephosphorizer 
before  Mr.  Snelus  had  conceived  that  it  could  accomplish  this 
result.  Mr.  Henderson  took  out  a  patent  in  England  for  his 
invention  in  1870,  and  his  process  was  used  with  satisfactory 
results  at  Du  Motay's  experimental  works  in  Belgium  in  the 
summer  of  1872.  The  pig  iron  which  was  dephosphorized 
and  converted  was  obtained  at  the  Bowling  works,  in  Eng- 
land. 

Colonel  J.  B.  Kunkel,  of  Frederick  county,  Maryland,  took 
out  letters-patent  in  the  United  States  in  1876  for  the  elimi- 
nation of  phosphorus  from  pig  iron  by  the  use  of  magne- 
sian  limestone  in  the  blast  furnace.  He  also  claimed  that 
by  the  use  of  this  agent  pig  iron  could  be  freed  from  phos- 
phorus while  being  refined  into  iron  or  steel.  No  notable 
results  appear  to  have  attended  the  granting  of  this  patent. 

The  Clapp-Griffiths  and  Robert-Bessemer  processes  for  the 
manufacture  of  Bessemer  steel  are  recent  modifications  of 
the  standard  Bessemer  process  which  need  not  be  described 
in  these  pages.  They  are  in  limited  use  in  Europe  and  the 
United  States.  Both  are  slow  processes,  and  they  are  used 
to  secure  special  products.  As  in  the  standard  process  the 
pneumatic  principle  is  an  essential  adjunct  of  both  these 
minor  processes.  Neither  process  appears  to  be  growing  in 
favor  either  in  this  country  or  in  'Europe.  Nor  have  we 
deemed  it  necessary  to  devote  any  part  of  our  space  to  a 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  407 

i 

consideration  of  the  experiments  about  1855  of  Joseph  Gil- 
bert Martien,  of  Newark,  New  Jersey,  in  refining  melted  cast 
iron  by  the  use  of  a  blast  of  cold  air.  They  were  not  suc- 
cessful in  producing  any  practical  results.  They  are  inter- 
esting simply  because  they  show  that  Martien,  as  well  as 
Kelly,  undertook  to  refine  melted  cast  iron  with  a  cold  blast 
before  Bessemer  set  out  to  accomplish  the  same  result.  The 
following  letter  from  Mr.  Martien  to  Messrs.  Munn  &  Co.,  of 
New  York,  the  well-known  patent  agents,  written  in  1857,  is  • 
of  interest  in  this  connection. 

MESSRS.  MUNN  &  Co.,  New  York. 

GENTLEMEN  :  Relative  to  the  claims  of  William  Kelly,  of  Lyon  county, 
Kentucky,  and  myself  to  certain  improvements  in  the  manufacture  of  iron 
without  the  use  of  fuel,  I  take  this  occasion  of  informing  you  and  the  pub- 
lic generally  that  agreeably  to  appointment  for  the  examination  of  vari- 
ous witnesses  in  the  above  case  for  priority  of  invention  between  myself 
and  Mr.  Kelly  I  have  found  and  have  been  made  perfectly  satisfied  from 
the  ample  testimony  laid  before  me  in  the  case  that  Mr.  Kelly  is  hon- 
estly the  first  and  original  inventor  of  the  said  process  of  manufacturing 
iron  without  fuel.  I  find,  moreover,  that  he  has  quietly  been  and  is  mak- 
ing improvements  and  advancing  with  his  invention  in  a  very  praise- 
worthy manner,  and  of  which  the  public  will  be  put  in  possession  in  a 
short  time.  I  have  therefore  deemed  it  a  duty  that  I  owe  to  myself  and 
the  original  inventor  to  come  out  and  publicly  state  the  above  facts  and 
thereby  give  publicity  to  the  same,  trusting  he  may  receive  the  due 
honour  therefor  and  be  richly  rewarded  for  his  genius. 

,  Respectfully,        J.  G.  MARTIEN. 

NEWARK,  NEW  JEESEY,  May  29, 1857. 

The  establishment  of  the  Bessemer  steel  industry  in  many 
countries  is  justly  regarded  as  constituting  a  much  more 
important  revolution  in  the  production  and  use  of  iron  and 
steel  than  had  been  created  by  any  preceding  influence  or 
combination  of  influences  in  any  age  of  the  world's  history. 
And  yet  this  great  industry  did  not  for  many  years  after  it 
was  established  in  Europe  attract  the  attention  either  on  that 
continent  or  on  this  which  its  importance  deserved.  In  his 
report  on  the  Paris  Exposition  of  1867  the  Hon.  Abram  S. 
Hewitt  said :  "  In  view  of  the  small  amount  of  Bessemer  steel 
as  yet  produced  in  the  United  States  we  are  struck  in  Europe 
with  surprise  at  the  enormous  provision  made  for  its  supply ; 
and  it  is  quite  evident  that  the  business  is  overdone,  and, 
contrary  to  all  past  experience,  the  inventor  and  the  public 
at  large  seem  to  have  profited  by  its  introduction  at  the  ex- 


408  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

pense  of  the  manufacturer."  Since  Mr.  Hewitt's  admirable 
report  was  written  how  great  has  been  the  development  in 
Europe  of  an  industry  which  was  then  "  overdone,"  and  how 
great  have  been  the  profits  of  the  European  manufacturer 
of  Bessemer  steel !  And  for  how  many  years  after  the  ap- 
pearance of  Mr.  Hewitt's  report  did  the  new  industry  liter- 
ally languish  in  this  country  ! 

Although  Bessemer  steel  is  adapted  to  all  purposes  fof 
which  other  steel  is  used,  except  perhaps  the  manufacture  of 
fine  cutlery,  its  use  in  Europe  has  been  mainly  confined  to  the 
production  of  railway  bars,  and  its  use  in  this  country  has 
been  even  more  narrowly  limited  to  the  same  product.  For 
many  years  after  the  introduction  of  the  Bessemer  process  in 
the  United  States  it  was  used  to  produce  nothing  but  rails. 
In  both  geographical  divisions  it  is  now  widely  used  for 
other  purposes. 

Robert  Forester  Mushet,  without  whose  triple  compound 
of  iron,  carbon,  and  manganese  the  Bessemer  process  for  mak- 
ing steel  could  not  have  been  successful,  died  at  Cheltenham, 
England,  on  January  29, 1891,  in  his  80th  year.  He  was  the 
youngest  son  of  the  celebrated  steelmaker,  David  Mushet, 
and  was  born  at  Coleford,  in  the  Forest  of  Dean,  in  1811. 
To  his  birth  in  the  Forest  Mr.  Mushet  owed  his  middle 
name  of  Forester. 

Sidney  Gilchrist  Thomas,  to  whom  the  chief  credit  is 
undoubtedly  due  for  the  invention  of  the  basic  process  by 
which  phosphorus  is  eliminated  from  pig  iron,  was  born  in 
England  in  April,  1850,  and  died  on  February  1,  1885,  in 
his  35th  year.  In  a  biographical  sketch  of  Mr.  Thomas  Mr. 
George  W.  Maynard  truly  says :  "  It  has  rarely  fallen  to  the 
lot  of  one  so  young  to  add  so  much  to  the  world's  knowl- 
edge and  wealth  as  did  Sidney  Gilchrist  Thomas." 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  409 

CHAPTER  XLVI. 
THE    BESSEMER    PROCESS    IN   THE   UNITED    STATES. 

As  EARLY  as  1861  Captain  E.  B.  Ward,  of  Detroit,  and  Z. 
S*  Durfee,  of  New  Bedford,  obtained  control  of  the  patents  of 
William  Kelly,  and  in  that  year  Mr.  Durfee  went  to  Europe 
to  study  the  Bessemer  process.  During  his  absence  Captain 
Ward  invited  Mr.  William  F.  Durfee,  also  of  New  Bedford, 
and  a  cousin  of  Z.  S.  Durfee,  to  erect  an  experimental  plant 
at  Wyandotte,  Michigan,  for  the  manufacture  of  pneumatic 
steel,  and  this  work  was  undertaken  in  the  latter  half  of  1862. 

In  May,  1863,  Daniel  J.  Morrell,  of  Johnstown,  and  Will- 
iam M.  Lyon  and  James  Park,  Jr.,  of  Pittsburgh,  having  be- 
come partners  of  Captain  Ward  and  Z.  S.  Durfee  in  the  con- 
trol of  the  patents  of  Mr.  Kelly,  the  Kelly  Pneumatic  Process 
Company  was  organized,  Mr.  Kelly  retaining  an  interest  in 
any  profits  which  might  accrue  to  the  company.  It  was  re- 
solved to  complete  the  experimental  works  already  under-  * 
taken,  and  also  to  acquire  the  patent  in  this  country  of  Mr. 
Mushet  for  the  use  of  spiegeleisen  as  a  recarburizing  agent. 
The  patent  was  granted  in  England  in  1856  and  in  this 
country  in  1857.  Mr.  Z.  S.  Durfee  accordingly  went  to  Eng- 
land to  procure  an  assignment  of  Mr.  Mushet's  patent.  The 
latter  purpose  was  effected  on  the  24th  of  October,  1864,  upon 
terms  which  admitted  Mr.  Mushet,  Thomas  D.  Clare,  and  John 
N.  Brown,  of  England,  to  membership  in  the  Kelly  Process 
Company.  On  the  5th  of  September,  1865,  the  company  was 
further  enlarged  by  the  admission  to  membership  of  Charles 
P.  Chouteau,  James  Harrison,  and  Felix  Valle,  all  of  St. 
Louis.  In  September,  1864,  William  F.  Durfee  succeeded  in  / 
making  Bessemer  steel  at  the  experimental  works  at  Wyan- 
dotte. This  was  the  first  Bessemer  steel  made  in  the  United  States. 
A  part  of  the  machinery  used  at  the  Wyandotte  works  was  , 
an  infringement  upon  Mr.  Bessemer's  American  patents. 

The  control  in  this  country  of  Mr.  Bessemer's  patents  was 
obtained  in  1864  by  John  F.  Winslow,  John  A.  Griswold,  and 
Alexander  L.  Holley,  all  of  Troy,  New  York,  Mr.  Holley  vis- 


410  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

iting  England  in  1863  in  the  interest  of  himself  and  his  asso- 
ciates. In  February,  1865,  Mr.  Holley  was  successful  at  Troy 
in  producing  Bessemer  steel  at  experimental  works  which  he 
had  constructed  for  his  company  at  that  place  in  1864.  Mr. 
Mushet's  method  of  recarburizing  melted  iron  in  the  con- 
verter was  used  at  Troy,  and  this  was  an  infringement  upon 
his  patent  in  this  country. 

As  the  Kelly  Process  Company  could  not  achieve  success 
without  Mr.  Bessemer's  machinery,  and  as  the  owners  of  the 
right  to  use  this  machinery  could  not  make  steel  without  Mr. 
Mushet's  improvement,  an  arrangement  was  made  by  which 
all  of  the  American  patents  were  consolidated  early  in  1866. 
Under  this  arrangement  the  titles  to  the  Kelly,  Bessemer, 
and  Mushet  patents  were  vested  in  Messrs.  Winslow,  Griswold, 
and  Morrell,  the  first  two  being  owners  of  seven-tenths  of 
the  property  and  Mr.  Morrell  holding  the  other  three-tenths 
in  trust  for  the  Kelly  Process  Company.  This  arrangement 
continued  until  the  formation  of  the  Pneumatic  Steel  Asso- 
ciation, a  joint-stock  company  organized  under  the  laws  of 
New  York,  in  which  the  ownership  of  the  consolidated  patents 
was  vested.  Z.  S.  Durfee  acted  as  the  secretary  and  treas- 
urer of  the  company.  The  ownership  of  the  patents  was  af- 
terwards vested  in  the  Bessemer  Steel  Company  Limited,  an 
association  organized  in  1877  under  the  laws  of  Pennsylvania. 
This  association  has  been  succeeded  by  the  Steel  Patents 
Company,  organized  in  1890.  All  the  original  English  and 
American  patents  have  expired.  The  Steel  Patents  Company, 
however,  owns  other  patents  relating  to  the  manufacture  of 
Bessemer  steel  which  have  not  expired. 

Mr.  Wm.  F.  Durfee  has  described  in  the  following  words 
the  quality  of  the  Bessemer  steel  first  made  at  Wyandotte. 

Various  experiments  were  tried  to  test  the  ductility  and  working  qual- 
ities of  the  steel  produced  at  Wyandotte.  Some  of  the  early  product  was 
sent  to  Bridgewater,  Massachusetts,  and  there  rolled  into  tack  plate  and 
cut  into  tacks  which  were  pronounced  to  be  very  much  superior  to  any 
previously  made  of  iron.  In  order  to  test  the  welding  qualities  of  the 
steel  John  Bishop,  the  blacksmith  of  the  works,  made  a  tobacco-pipe  the 
size  of  an  ordinary  clay  pipe,  the  bowl  and  stem  of  which  were  welded 
up  of  Wyandotte  steel,  and  when  perfectly  polished  there  was  no  visible 
evidence  of  a  weld.  I  have  now  two  jackknives  and  a  razor  made  from 
this  steel ;  the  knives  are  rather  soft,  but  the  razor  was  used  regularly 
by  my  father  for  fifteen  years  to  his  entire  satisfaction. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  411 

The  consolidation  in  1866  of  the  various  interests  above 
mentioned  was  followed  by  a  large  reduction  in  fees  and  roy- 
alties, and  thenceforward  the  business  of  making  Bessemer 
steel  was  rapidly  extended  in  this  country.  The  order  in 
which  the  pioneer  Bessemer  steel  works  of  the  United  States 
were  established  down  to  1876  is  presented  below.  From 
1876  to  1881  no  Bessemer  steel  works  were  established  in 
this  country.  Beginning  with  1881  many  new  Bessemer 
works  have  been  built  in  the  United  States,  but  a  list  of 
these  works  in  these  pages  would  occupy  too  much  space. 

1.  Kelly  Pneumatic  Process  Company,  Wyandotte,  Wayne  county,  Mich- 
igan.   One  2£-ton  experimental  converter.    Made  its  first  blow  in  Septem- 
ber, 1864.    Bought  by  Captain  E.  B.  Ward  in^lSGS  and  abandoned  in  1869. 
These  experimental  works  were  connected  with  an  iron  rolling  mill. 

2.  Albany  and  Rensselaer  Iron  and  Steel  Company,  Troy,  New  York. 
Experimental  Bessemer  plant  established  by  Winslow,  Griswold  &  Holley. 
One  2^-ton  converter.    Made  its  first  blow  February  15,  1865.    Now  two 
10-ton  converters.    Added  to  an  iron  rail  mill. 

3.  Pennsylvania  Steel  Works,  Pennsylvania  Steel  Company,  Steelton, 
Dauphin    county,  Pennsylvania.     Two    7-ton    converters.     Made   its    first 
blow   in  June,  1867.    An   entirely    new    works.    Three    8-ton    converters 
added  in  1881. 

4.  Freedom  Iron  and  Steel  Works,  Lewistown,  Mifflin  county,  Pennsyl- 
vania.   Two  5-ton  converters.    Made  their  first  blow  May  1, 1868.    Added 
to  the  works  of  the  Freedom  Iron  Company.    Failed  in  1869  and  Besse- 
mer works  dismantled ;  most  of  the  machinery  was  taken  to  Joliet,  Illinois. 

5.  Cleveland  Rolling  Mill  Company,  Cleveland,  Ohio.    Two  6|-ton  con- 
verters.   Made  its  first  blow  October  15,  1868.    Now  two  10-ton  converters. 
Added  to  an  iron  rail  mill. 

6.  Cambria  Iron  and  Steel  Works,  Cambria  Iron  Company,  Johnstown, 
Pennsylvania.    Two  6-ton  converters.    Made  its  first  blow  July  10,  1871. 
Added  to  an  iron  rail  mill.    Now  two  11^-ton  converters. 

7.  Union    Steel    Company,    Chicago,    Illinois.    Two   6-ton   converters. 
Made  its  first  blow  July  26,  1871.    Added  to  an  iron  rail  mill.    Now  two 
10-ton  converters. 

8.  North  Chicago  Rolling  Mill  Company,  Chicago,  Illinois.    Two  6-ton 
converters.    Made  its  first  blow  April  10,  1872.    Added  to  an  iron  rail  mill. 

9.  Joliet  Steel  Works,  Joliet  Steel  Company,  Joliet,  Illinois.    Two  8-ton 
converters.    Made  its  first  blow  January  26,  1873,  and  its  first  steel  rail 
March  15,  1873.    An  entirely  new  works. 

10.  Bethlehem  Iron  Company,  Bethlehem,  Pennsylvania.    Two  7-ton 
converters.    Made  its  first  blow  October  4,  1873,  and  its  first  steel  rail  Oc-  \ 
tober  18_^1873.    Now  four  7-ton  converters.    Added  to  an  iroTFrafl  mill. 

11.  Edgar  Thomson  Steel  Works,  Carnegie  Brothers  &  Co.  Limited, 
Bessemer  station,  Allegheny  county,  Pennsylvania.    Two  7-ton  converters. 
Made  their  first  blow  August  25,  1875,  and  their  first  steel  rail  September  1, 
1875.    An  entirely  new  works.    Now  four  15-ton  converters. 


412  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

12.  Lackawanna  Iron  and  Steel  Works,  Lacka wanna  Iron  and  Coal 
Company,  Scranton,  Lackawanna  county,  Pennsylvania.    Two  5-ton  con- 
verters.   Made  its  first  blow  October  23,  1875,  and  its  first  steel  rail  De- 
cember 29,  1875.    Added  to  an  iron  rail  mill.    Now  three  7-ton  converters. 

13.  St.  Louis  Ore  and  Steel  Company,  St.  Louis,  Missouri.    Two  7-ton 
converters.    Made  its  first  blow  September  1, 1876.    Added  to  an  iron  rail 
mill.    These  works  have  long  been  idle. 

Mr.  Robert  W.  Hunt  informs  us  that  the  first  conversion 
made  at  Troy  was  from  Crown  Point  charcoal  pig  iron,  melt- 
ed in  a  reverberatory  furnace,  and  Mr.  William  F.  Durfee  in- 
forms us  that  the  first  steel  made  at  Wyandotte  was  converted 
from  Lake  Superior  charcoal  pig  iron,  also  melted  in  a  rever- 
beratory furnace,  although  on  a  number  of  subsequent  occa- 
sions the  metal  for  conversion  was  taken  directly  to  the  con- 
verter from  the  Eureka  charcoal  blast  furnace. 

It  is  supposed  that  the  first  attempt  made  in  the  world 
to  melt  pig  iron  in  a  cupola  for  conversion  into  steel  by 
the  Bessemer  process  was  made  by  Mr.  Z.  S.  Durfee  at  the 
works  at  Wyandotte  during  the  spring  of  1865.  This  at- 
tempt failed  of  success,  owing  to  the  small  size  of  the  cupola 
and  the  length  of  time  required  to  accumulate  enough  iron 
in  the  traveling  ladle  for  use  in  the  converter ;  but  the  pres- 
ent general  employment  of  the  cupola  whenever  pig  iron  is 
used  for  conversion  into  Bessemer  steel  is  sufficient  evidence 
that  the  thought  which  prompted  this  first  experiment  had 
a  substantial  and  practical  foundation.  Mr.  Hunt  states  that 
on  July  20, 1865,  Mr.  Holley  successfully  used  the  cupola  at 
Troy  in  connection  with  the  Bessemer  process.  The  English 
practice  at  this  time  was  to  use  the  reverberatory  furnace. 

The  first  Bessemer  steel  rails  ever  made  in  this  country 
were  rolled  at  the  North  Chicago  rolling  mill  on  the  24th  of 
May,  1865,  from  ingots  made  at  the  experimental  steel  works 
at  Wyandotte  under  the  supervision  of  William  F.  Durfee, 
superintendent.  The  rolls  with  which  the  steel  rails  were 
rolled  at  the  North  Chicago  rolling  mill  had  been  in  use  for 
rolling  iron  rails.  The  steel  rails  came  out  sound  and  well- 
shaped.  Several  of  these  rails  were  laid  in  the  track  of  one 
of  the  railroads  running  out  of  Chicago  and  were  still  in  use 
in  1875.  The  American  Iron  and  Steel  Association  was  in 
session  at  Chicago  at  the  time,  and  several  of  its  members 
witnessed  the  rolling  of  the  rails. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  413 

The  following  letter  from  Mr.  O.  W.  Potter,  of  Chicago, 
long  president  of  the  North  Chicago  Rolling  Mill  Company, 
written  to  Mr.  William  F.  Durfee  in  1865,  two  days  after  the 
rolling  of  the  first  American  steel  rails  in  that  city,  is  of  his- 
torical value  and  worthy  of  preservation. 

MY  DEAR  DURFEE  :  The  meeting  of  the  iron  and  steel  men  adjourned 
yesterday  to  meet  in  Cleveland  the  fourth  Wednesday  in  August.  I  regret 
very  much  you  could  not  have  been  here,  particularly  to  see  how  well  your 
steel  behaved,  and  you  must  allow  me  to  congratulate  you  upon  its  entire 
success,  and  I  assure  you  I  was  but  too  proud  for  your  sake  that  everything 
we  had  to  do  with  it  proved  so  very  successful.  The  hammer  was  altogether 
too  light -of  course,  and  it  took  more  time  than  it  otherwise  would  to  draw 
the  ingot  down,  yet  all  the  pieces  worked  beautifully,  and  we  have  made 
six  good  rails  from  the  ingots  sent  over,  and  not  one  bad  one  in  any  re- 
spect. The  piece  you  sent  over  forged  is  no  w^  lying  in  state  at  the  Tremont 
House,  and  is  really  a  beautiful  rail,  and  has  been  presented  to  the  Sanitary 
Fair  by  Captain  Ward.  We  rolled  three  rails  on  Wednesday  and  three  on 
Thursday.  At  the  first  rolling  only  your  cousin  and  George  Fritz  were  pres- 
ent ;  at  the  rolling  yesterday  were  Senator  Howe,  of  Wisconsin ;  B.  F. 
Jones,  of  Pittsburgh ;  R.  H.  Lamborn,  of  Philadelphia ;  Mr.  Phillips,  of  Cin- 
cinnati ;  Mr.  Swift,  of  Cincinnati ;  Mr.  Kennedy,  of  Cincinnati ;  Mr.  May> 
of  Milwaukee,  and  three  ladies ;  Mr.  Scofield,  of  Milwaukee ;  Mr.  Fritz,  of 
Johnstown ;  and  Mr.  Thomas,  of  Indianapolis,  with  four  strangers.  Every- 
thing went  so  well  I  really  wanted  you  to  see  some  of  the  good  of  your  la- 
bors for  so  long  a  time  and  under  such  trying  circumstances.  You  have 
done  what  you  set  out  to  do,  and  done  it  well,  and  I  am  glad  to  congratu- 
late you  and  rejoice  with  you,  for  I  can  appreciate  some  of  your  difficulties, 
and  wanted  you  to  hear  some  of  the  praises  bestowed  upon  your  labors  as 
you  richly  deserve.  I  know  this  would  make  no  sort  of  difference  to  you, 
yet  we  all  have  vanity  enough  (especially  in  such  cases  as  this)  to  feel  grat- 
ified at  any  little  compliments  we  know  we  are  entitled  to,  but  I  will  not 
tire  you  with  any  more,  as  your  cousin  [the  late  Z.  S.  Durfee]  can  tell  you 
all  and  more  than  I  can  write,  but  with  kindest  regards  allow  me  to  remain 
Yours  Most  Obt.,  0.  W.  POTTER. 

OFFICE  OF  THE  CHICAGO  ROLLING  MILL,  CHICAGO,  May  26,  1865. 

The  first  steel  rails  ever  rolled  in  the  United  States  upon 
order,  in  the  way  of  regular  business,  were  rolled  by  the  Cam- 
bria Iron  Company,  at  Johnstown,  Pennsylvania,  in  August, 
1867^  from  ingots  made  at  the  works  of  the  Pennsylvania 
Steel  Company  near  Harrisburg,  Pennsylvania;  and  by  the 
Spuyten  Duyvil  Rolling  Mill  Company,  at  Spuyten  Duyvil, 
New  York,  early  in  September  of  that  year,  from  ingots  made  i 
at  the  Bessemer  steel  works  at  Troy,  New  York,  then  owned 
by  Winslow  &  Griswold. 

Important  improvements  upon  Mr.  Bessemer's  machinery 


414 


THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


have  been  invented  and  patented  by  A.  L.  Holley,  George 
Fritz,  Robert  W.  Hunt,  William  R.  Jones,  and  other  American 
engineers.  Of  these  improvements  the  most  notable  is  the 
Fritz  blooming  mill,  which  is  in  general  use  in  this  country 
and  in  Europe.  The  largest  number  of  improvements  were 
made  by  Mr.  Holley.  The  inventive  genius  and  rare  me- 
chanical skill  of  Mr.  John  Fritz,  of  the  Bethlehem  Iron  Com- 
pany, have  also  produced  many  valuable  improvements  which 
were  clearly  patentable  but  have  not  been  patented. 

In  the  early  stages  of  the  Bessemer  steel  industry  in  this 
country  great  difficulty  was  experienced  in  obtaining  suitable 
pig  iron  and  also  materials  for  the  lining  of  the  converters. 
Large  quantities  of  Bessemer  pig  iron  were  annually  import- 
ed. Our  manufacturers  were  uncertain  whether  American 
ores  would  make  good  Bessemer  pig  iron,  and  many  failures 
occurred  in  using  domestic  pig  iron  that  was  unsuited  for 
conversion  into  steel.  The  lack  of  skilled  workmen  was  also 
severely  felt.  All  difficulties,  however,  have  long  been  over- 
come. It  is  now  universally  admitted  that  in  the  United 
States  this  industry  has  been  brought  to  a  higher  state  of 
perfection  than  it  has  attained  in  any  other  country.  The 
American  Bessemer  steel  works  have  been  constructed  after 
plans  which  are  in  the  main  greatly  superior  to  those  of 
European  works.  The  United  States  is  now  not  only  inde- 
pendent of  other  countries  for  its  supply  of  Bessemer  pig 
iron  but  it  is  also  the  largest  producer  of  Bessemer  pig  iron 
in  the  world. 

Since  1867  the  American  Iron  and  Steel  Association  has 
annually  ascertained  the  production  of  Bessemer  steel  ingots 
in  the  United  States.  It  has  been  as  follows,  in  net  tons. 


Years. 

Net  tons. 

Years. 

Net  tons. 

Years. 

Net  tons. 

1867  

3000 

1875 

375  517 

1883 

1  654  627 

1868  

8,500 

1876.  .  .  . 

525  996 

1884 

1  540  595 

1869  

12,000 

1877  

560  587 

1885 

1  701  762 

1870  

42,000 

1878  

732  296 

1886 

o  JJ41  493 

1871  

45000 

1879 

928  972 

1887 

3  288  357 

1872  

120  108 

1880 

1  203  173 

1888 

2  812  500 

1873  

170,652 

1881 

1  539  157 

1889 

3  281  899 

1874  

191,933 

1882.  

1  696  450 

1890 

4  131  535 

The  Association  has  also  ascertained  as  follows  the  pro- 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES. 


415 


duction  of  Bessemer  steel  rails  in  the  United  States  in  net 
tons  since  the  commencement  of  their  manufacture  in  this 
country  as  a  commercial  product  in  1867.  The  total  pro- 
duction of  rails  from  1867  to  1890  was  19,483,930  net  tons. 


Years. 

Net  tons. 

Years. 

Net  tons. 

Years. 

Net  tons. 

1867 

2550 

1  1875  

290,863 

1883  

1  286  554 

1868 

7  225 

i  1876  

4r2,461 

1884  

1  116  621 

1869 

9  650 

1877  

432,169 

1885  

1  074  607 

1870 

34,000 

1878  

550,398 

1886  

1,763  667 

1871                     •  .. 

38,250 

i  1879  

683,964 

1887  

2,354,132 

94,070 

1880  

954,460 

1888  

1,552,631 

1873 

199  015 

1881 

1  330  302 

1889 

1  691  264 

1874          

144,944 

1882  

1,438,155 

1890  

2,091,978 

A  comparison  of  the  production  of  ingots  and  rails  will 
show  approximately  the  quantity  of  Bessemer  steel  that  has 
annually  been  used  in  miscellaneous  forms.  Virtually  all  of 
the  Bessemer  steel  that  has  been  produced  in  this  country  has 
been  used  at  home ;  only  a  small  quantity  has  been  exported. 

The  following  table  shows  in  gross  tons  the  production  of 
Bessemer  steel  ingots  and  Bessemer  steel  rails  in  the  United 
States  and  in  Great  Britain  from  1877  to  1890. 


Years. 

United  States—  Gross  tons, 

Great  Britain—  Gross  tons. 

Ingots. 

Rails. 

Ingots. 

Rails. 

1877               

500,524 
653,773 
829,439 
1,074,262 
1,374,247 
1,514,687 
1,477,345 
1,375,531 
1,519,430 
2,269,190 
2,936,033 
2,511,161 
2,930,204 
3,688,871 

385,865 
491,427 
610,682 
852,196 
1,187,770 
1,284,067 
1,148,709 
996,983 
959,471 
1,574,703 
2,101,904 
1,386,277 
1,510,057 
1,867,837 

750,000 
807,527 
834,511 
1,044,382 
1,441,719 
1,673,649 
1,553,380 
1,299,676 
1,304,127 
1,570,520 
2,089,403 
2,032,794 
2,140,791 
2,014,843 

508,400 
622,390 
520,231 
732,910 
1,023,740 
1,235,785 
1,097,174 
784,968 
706,583 
730,343 
1,021,847 
979,083 
943,048 
1,019,606 

1878    

1879  

1880  

1881  

1882 

1883 

1884 

1885 

1886 

1887  

1888  ..      . 

1889  

1890  

The  benefits  which  this  country  has  derived  from  home- 
made steel  rails,  which  have  long  been  cheaper  than  iron  rails  \   \ 
were  ever  sold,  are  so  numerous  and  enter  so  largely  into  the  /  * 
daily  life  of  all  our  people  that  they  have  ceased  to  excite 
comment,  like  the  natural  blessings  of  light,  air,  and  water. 
The  wearing  qualities  of   a  steel  rail  being  much   superior 


416  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

to  those  of  an  iron  rail  it  is  capable  of  supporting  a  much 
heavier  weight  of  cars,  locomotives,  freight,  and  passengers, 
and  it  permits  trains  to  be  moved  at  a  much  greater  rate 
of  speed ;  hence  the  carrying  capacity  of  our  railroads  has 
been  greatly  increased  and  the  cost  of  operating  them  has 
been  greatly  decreased.  The  life  of  a  steel  rail  being  much 
longer  than  that  of  an  iron  rail  the  cost  to  our  railroad 
companies  for  renewals  of  track  is  many  times  less  than  if 
iron  rails  were  still  used.  The  immense  agricultural  crops  of 
the  country  in  the  last  twenty  years  never  could  have  been 
moved  to  either  home  or  foreign  markets  if  iron  rails  had 
been  continued  in  use;  the  attempt  to  transport  them  upon 
iron  rails  would  have  so  worn  out  the  rails  that  the  tracks 
would  constantly  have  been  torn  up  for  repairs,  and  this 
would  have  resulted  in  a  continual  interruption  to  all  traffic. 
If  our  dependence  for  steel  rails  had  been  on  foreign  sources 
of  supply  the  cost  of  transportation  resulting  from  the  high 
prices  of  foreign  rails  would  have  been  so  great  that  it  would 
not  have  been  profitable  to  grow  these  immense  crops ;  in- 
deed the  prices  of  foreign  rails  would  have  been  so  high  that 
few  railroads  would  have  been  built  in  the  Western  States 
and  Territories,  and  the  marvelous  development  of  that  sec- 
tion could  not  have  taken  place.  Finally  it  may  be  said  that, 
but  for  our  cheap  home-made  steel  rails,  flour  and  meat, 
lumber  and  coal,  and  other  heavy  products  could  not  have 
| been  cheaply  distributed  to  consumers;  the  necessaries  of 
jllife  would  have  been  largely  enhanced  in  price  through  the 
high  cost  of  transportation;  and  the  whole  country  would 
have  had  a  much  less  rapid  growth  than  it  has  experienced. 

The  following  persons  who  were  prominently  identified 
with  the  introduction  of  the  Bessemer  steel  industry  into  this 
cptfntry  have  passed  to  the  other  world. 

John  A.  Griswold  was  born  at  Nassau,  Rensselaer  county, 
New  York,  on  November  14,  1818,  and  died  at  Troy,  New 
York,  on  October  31,  1872,  aged  almost  54  years. 

George  Fritz  was  born  in  Londonderry  township,  Ches- 
ter county,  Pennsylvania,  on  December  15,  1828,  and  died  at 
Johnstown,  Pennsylvania,  on  August  5,  1873,  aged  almost  45 
years.  For  many  years  he  was  the  chief  engineer  of  the 
Cambria  iron  wt>rks. 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  417 

Captain  E.  B.  Ward  was  bom  in  Canada,  of  Vermont 
parents,  on  December  25,  1811,  and  died  suddenly  at  Detroit, 
Michigan,  on  January  2, 1875,  aged  over  63  years. 

Z.  S.  Durfee  was  born  at  Fall  River,  Massachusetts,  on 
April  22, 1831,  and  died  at  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  on  June 
8,  1880,  aged  over  49  years. 

Alexander  L.  Holley  was  born  at  Lakeville,  Connecticut, 
on  July  20,  1832,  and  died  at  Brooklyn,  New  York,  on  Janu- 
ary 29, 1882,  aged  nearly  50  years. 

James  Park,  Jr.,  was  born  at  Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania, 
on  January  11, 1820,  and  died  at  Allegheny  City,  Pennsylva- 
nia, on  April  21, 1883,  aged  over  63  years. 

Daniel  J.  Morrell  was  born  in  North  Berwick,York  county, 
Maine,  on  August  8, 1821,  and  died  at  Johnstown,  Pennsylva- 
nia, on  August  20,  1885,  aged  over  64  years.  At  the  time  of 
his  death  Mr.  Morrell  was  the  president  of  the  American  Iron 
and  Steel  Association. 

Thomas  M.  Carnegie,  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Edgar 
Thomson  steel  works,  was  born  at  Dunfermline,  Scotland,  on 
October  2,  1844,  and  died  at  Homewood,  near  Pittsburgh,  on 

«,ober  19,  1886,  aged  over  42  years. 
William  Kelly,  the  American  inventor  of  the  pneumatic 
process  for  making  steel,  was  born  at  Pittsburgh  on  August 
21,  1811,  of  Irish  parentage,  and  died  at  Louisville,  Kentucky, 
on  February  11, 1888,  in  his  77th  year. 

Samuel  M.  Felton,  president  of  the  Pennsylvania  Steel 
Company,  and  one  of  its  founders,  was  born  at  West  New- 
bury,  Massachusetts,  on  July  17,  1809,  and  died  at  Philadel- 
phia on  January  24,  1889,  in  his  80th  year. 

William  M.  Lyon  was  born  at  Harrisburg,  Pennsylvania, 
on  April  29,  1809,  and  died  at  Pittsburgh  on  July  3,  1889, 
aged  over  80  years. 

Captain  William  R.  Jones,  general  superintendent  of  the 
Edgar  Thomson  steel  works,  was  born  at  Hyde  Park,  (Scran- 
ton,)  Luzerne  county,  Pennsylvania,  on  February  23,  1839, 
and  died  at  Braddock  on  September  28,  1889,  in  his  51st 
year.  He  was  fatally  burned  by  the  bursting  of  Furnace  C. 

The  deaths  of  Henry  Chisholm  and  Alfred  Hunt,  which 
properly  should  be  recorded  in  this  connection,  have  already 
been  noticed  in  the  Ohio  and  Pennsylvania  chapters. 


418  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

CHAPTER  XLVIL 
THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  OPEN-HEARTH  STEEL. 

THE  open-hearth  process  for  the  manufacture  of  steel,  of 
which  the  Siemens-Martin  furnace  is  the  most  popular  type, 
consists  in  melting  pig  iron  in  a  large  dish-shaped  vessel, 
or  reverberatory  furnace,  and  afterwards  decarburizing  it  by 
adding  wrought  iron,  steel  scrap,  or  iron  ore,  a  deficiency  of 
carbon  being  supplied,  as  in  the  Bessemer  process,  by  the  ap- 
plication of  spiegeleisen  or  ferro-manganese.  The  product  is 
steel,  containing  any  percentage  of  carbon  that  may  be  de- 
sired. The  materials  used  are  melted  by  the  union  in  the 
furnace  of  atmospheric  air  and  combustible  gases,  affording 
an  intense  heat.  All  of  the  heat  employed  is  obtained  by 
the  use  of  a  regenerative  gas  furnace.  The  melted  pig  iron, 
previous  to  receiving  the  decarburizing  ingredients,  is  term- 
ed a,  bath.  The  quantity  of  steel  which  may  be  made  at  one 
operation,  or  heat,  ranges  from  five  to  thirty-five  tons, 
ing  to  the  size  of  the  furnace. 

The  open-hearth  process,  although  capable  of  producing 
as  large  masses  of  steel  as  the  Bessemer  process,  is  much 
slower  in  its  operation,  but  it  possesses  the  advantage  over  its 
rival  that  the  melted  mixture  may  be  indefinitely  kept  in  a 
state  of  fusion  until  experiments  with  small  portions  deter- 
mine the  exact  conditions  necessary  to  produce  a  required 
quality  of  steel.  Another  important  distinction  may  be 
noticed.  While  the  cardinal  features  of  both  the  Bessemer 
and  the  open-hearth  processes  embrace  strictly  chemical  op- 
erations on  a  large  scale,  no  direct  manipulation  of  the  con- 
tents of  the  Bessemer  converter  or  the  open-hearth  furnace 
being  necessary,  there  is  this  mechanical  difference,  that  the 
success  of  the  former  mainly  rests  upon  the  wonderful  pow- 
er and  perfection  of  the  machinery  by  which  it  is  operated, 
while  the  success  of  the  latter  mainly  rests  upon  the  appli- 
ances for  producing  and  storing  up  the  gases  used  in  creat- 
ing combustion. 

Both  processes  may  be  combined  with  already-existing 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  419 

iron  rolling  mills  or  crucible  steel  works,  but  the  open-hearth 
process  can  be  most  economically  added  to  such  establish- 
ments, and  this  is  one  cause  of  its  increasing  popularity,  al- 
though, as  already  intimated,  its  productive  capabilities  are 
much  less  than  those  of  the  Bessemer  process.  The-  open- 
hearth  process  is  also  especially  adapted  to  the  utilization  of 
the  scrap  steel  and  rail  ends  which  accumulate  at  Bessemer 
steel  works,  and  very  naturally,  therefore,  many  open-hearth 
furnaces  have  been  built  in  connection  with  these  works,  both 
in  Europe  and  in  the  United  States.  Another  advantage  of 
this  process  is  its  ready  adaptation  to  the  remelting  of  worn- 
out  steel  rails  for  the  production  of  steel  in  other  forms.  A 
popular  use  of  the  open-hearth  process  in  both  Europe  and 
America  is  the  production  of  steel  plates  for  boilers  and  fire- 
boxes. On  both  continents  open-hearth  steel  is  also  largely 
used  as  a  substitute  for  iron  in  shipbuilding  and  bridge- 
building.  It  is  also  rapidly  coming  into  use  in  all  countries 
in  the  manufacture  of  all  kinds  of  tools,  and  generally  as  a 
competitor  of  wrought  iron  and  other  kinds  of  steel. 

The  importance  of  the  two  processes  which  have  been 
mentioned,  and  the  extent  of  the  revolution  they  have  ef- 
fected, may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  they  have  united- 
ly increased  the  world's  production  of  steel  at  least  one  hun- 
dred fold  in  the  last  thirty-five  years. 

Previous  to  1856,  the  same  year  in  which  Mr.  Bessemer 
obtained  his  most  important  patent,  (February  12,  1856,)  Dr. 
Charles  William  Siemens,  in  conjunction  with  his  brother, 
Frederick  Siemens,  both  of  whom  were  natives  of  Hanover, 
in  Germany,  but  at  the  time  were  citizens  of  England  and 
residents  of  London,  devoted  his  inventive  genius  to  the  con- 
struction of  a  gas  furnace  for  the  manufacture  of  iron,  steel, 
glass,  and  other  products  which  require  a  high  and  uniform 
heat.  These  gentlemen  were  in  that  year  successful  in  per- 
fecting the  Siemens  regenerative  gas  furnace,  which  has  since 
been  widely  introduced  in  Europe  and  in  this  country,  and 
without  which  no  open-hearth  steel  can  be  made.  The  first 
patent  in  connection  with  this  invention  was  granted  in  1856 
to  Frederick  Siemens  alone. 

As  early  as  1861  Dr.  Siemens  experimented  with  the  re- 
generative furnace  in  the  production  of  cast  steel  in  a  rever- 


420  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

beratory  furnace,  or  open-hearth,  for  which  application  of  the 
regenerative  furnace  he  obtained  a  patent.  He  subsequently 
encountered  great  practical  difficulties  in  establishing  his 
process  of  making  steel,  efforts  to  accomplish  this  result  be- 
ing made  in  1862  at  Tow  Law  and  in  1863  and  1864  at  Bar- 
row and  Fourchambault,  the  first  two  places  being  in  Eng- 
land and  the  last  place  being  in  France. 

In  1864  Messrs.  Emile  and  Pierre  Martin,  of  the  Sireuil 
works,  in  France,  erected  with  the  assistance  of  Dr.  Siemens 
one  of  the  Siemens  regenerative  gas  furnaces  to  melt  steel  in 
an  open-hearth,  or  reverberatory  furnace,  of  their  own  con- 
struction. In  this  furnace  they  produced  cast  steel  of  good 
quality  and  various  tempers,  and  at  the  Paris  Exposition  of 
1867  their  product  secured  for  them  a  gold  medal.  Previous 
to  this  time  and  subsequently  the  Messrs.  Martin  obtained 
patents  for  various  inventions  which  were  applicable  to  the 
manufacture  of  steel  by  the  Siemens  regenerative  furnace. 
Their  principal  patent,  describing  the  combined  process  of 
decarburization  and  recarburization,  was  obtained  in  France 
in  1865. 

Dr.  Siemens  claims,  in  a  letter  which  is  now  before  us, 
that  both  at  Tow  Law  and  Fourchambault  cast  steel  had 
been  produced  from  pig  iron,  spiegeleisen,  and  scrap  iron 
upon  an  open-hearth  which  had  been  especially  constructed 
by  himself  for  that  purpose  previous  to  the  Messrs.  Martin's 
connection  with  the  process.  The  furnace  at  Tow  Law  was  a 
small  one,  and  several  such  furnaces  were  at  work  there  a 
few  years  ago  in  the  manner  originally  designed  by  Dr.  Sie- 
mens. In  1865  Dr.  Siemens  commenced  the  erection  at  Bir- 
mingham, in  England,  of  steel  works  of  his  own,  in  which 
the  regenerative  furnace  should  be  used  in  producing  steel. 
These  works,  which  were  completed  in  1867,  have  produced 
satisfactory  results. 

The  Messrs.  Martin  devoted  their  efforts  to  the  production 
of  steel  by  the  use  of  wrought  iron  and  steel  scrap  and  also 
iron  ore  as  decarburizers  in  a  bath  of  pig  iron,  while  the  ef- 
forts of  Dr.  Siemens  were  more  especially  directed  to  the  pro- 
duction of  steel  by  the  use  of  iron  ore  alone  as  a  decarbur- 
izer  in  a  bath  of  pig  iron,  the  ore  being  either  in  the  raw 
state  or  in  a  more  or  less  reduced  condition.  Until  recently 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  421 

the  "  pig  and  ore  "  method  was  generally  employed  in  Great 
Britain.  The  "  pig  and  scrap  "  method  is  chiefly  used  on  the 
Continent  and  in  this  country.  In  Great  Britain  a  combina- 
tion of  both  methods  is  to-day  in  use.  Under  an  agreement 
between  the  Messrs.  Martin  and  Dr.  Siemens  the  open-hearth 
process  as  developed  by  them  was  called  the  Martin-Siemens 
process  on  the  Continent  and  the  Siemens-Martin  process  in 
Great  Britain.  In  this  country  this  process  is  uniformly 
styled  the  Siemens-Martin  process.  The  credit  of  introduc- 
ing the  "  pig  and  scrap  "  method  into  this  country  is  due  to 
the  Hon.  Abram  S.  Hewitt,  of  New  York,  who  was  favorably 
impressed  with  it  when  visiting  the  Paris  Exposition  in  1867 
as  a  commissioner  of  the  United  States.  At  his  request  Mr. 
Frederick  J.  Slade,  his  assistant,  went  to  Sireuil  to  study  the 
process  that  it  might  be  put  into  practice  in  this  country. 

Dr.  Siemens  and  the  Messrs.  Martin  obtained  patents  in 
this  country  for  the  use  of  their  respective  processes  for  man- 
ufacturing steel,  and  Dr.  Siemens  also  obtained  American  pat- 
ents for  the  Siemens  gas  furnace.  The  validity  of  the  Mar- 
tin patents  in  this  country  was  never  sustained  by  the  courts. 

The  open-hearth  process  in  the  manufacture  of  steel  did 
not  originate  with  either  Dr.  Siemens  or  the  Martins,  having 
been  proposed  and  experimented  with  by  various  other  in- 
ventors prior  to  their  connection  with  it,  among  whom  Jo- 
siah  Marshall  Heath  was  most  prominent  as  early  as  1845, 
but  it  is  entirely  just  to  add  that  it  was  not  made  a  success 
until  the  great  heat  supplied  by  the  Siemens  regenerative 
gas  furnace  was  applied  to  it. 

In  the  conversion  into  steel  of  the  raw  materials  used  in 
the  open-hearth  process  the  invention  of  Mr.  Mushet,  describ- 
ed in  the  preceding  chapter,  is  indispensable.  The  dephos- 
phorizing process  of  Messrs.  Thomas  and  Gilchrist  is  also 
applicable  to  the  manufacture  of  steel  in  the  open-hearth 
when  the  materials  to  be  used  contain  a  large  percentage  of 
phosphorus. 

On  the  1st  of  December,  1862,  Park,  McCurdy  &  Co.,  of 
Pittsburgh,  sent  Lewis  Powe,  the  manager  of  their  copper 
works,  to  England  to  study-  the  manufacture  of  tinplates. 
While  there  he  visited  Birmingham  and  saw  a  Siemens  gas 
furnace  and  procured  one  of  the  Siemens  pamphlets  contain- 


422  THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 

ing  a  full  description  of  it.  On  his  return  home  he  called 
the  attention  of  Mr.  James  Park,  Jr.,  to  the  merits  of  the 
furnace.  Immediately  after  July  4,  1863,  the  erection  of  a 
Siemens  gas  furnace  was  commenced  at  the  copper  works. 
This  furnace  was  erected  for  the  purpose  of  melting  and  re- 
fining copper,  and  was  completed  on  the  14th  of  August,  1863. 
It  was  constructed  after  the  drawings  contained  in  the  Sie- 
mens pamphlet  and  worked  well.  In  the  fall  of  1863  Mr. 
Powe  revisited  England,  and  while  there  had  an  interview 
with  Dr.  Siemens.  Soon  afterwards  the  firm  of  Park,  Broth- 
er &  Co.  built  a  Siemens  furnace  to  heat  steel,  but  it  was  not 
a  success.  In  1864  James  B.  Lyon  &  Co.,  of  Pittsburgh,  built 
a  Siemens  gas  furnace  for  making  glass.  The  enterprise, 
however,  although  mechanically  successful,  met  with  an  ac- 
cident which  suddenly  brought  it  to  an  end.  This  furnace 
was  also  constructed  after  published  designs.  The  introduc- 
tion into  this  country  of  the  Siemens  furnace  by  each  of  the 
above-named  firms  was  accomplished  in  an  irregular  manner, 
without  first  obtaining  licenses  from  Dr.  Siemens. 

The  first  Siemens  gas  furnace  that  was  regularly  intro- 
duced into  this  country  for  any  purpose  was  built  by  John 
A.  Griswold  &  Co.,  at  Troy,  New  York,  and  used  as  a  heating 
furnace  in  their  rolling  mill,  the  license  having  been  granted 
on  the  18th  of  September,  1867.  The  next  gas  furnace  that 
was  regularly  introduced  was  used  as  a  heating  furnace  by 
the  Nashua  Iron  and  Steel  Company,  of  New  Hampshire, 
the  license  for  which  was  granted  on  the  26th  of  September, 
1867.  The  next  furnace  that  was  regularly  introduced  was 
built  by  Anderson  &  Woods,  of  Pittsburgh,  for  melting  steel 
in  pots,  the  license  for  which  was  dated  in  November,  1867. 
About  1869  the  owners  of  the  Lenox  plate-glass  works,  in 
Massachusetts,  also  built  a  Siemens  gas  furnace.  All  of  these 
furnaces  gave  satisfaction. 

The  first  open-hearth  furnace  introduced  into  this  country 
for  the  manufacture  of  steel  by  the  Siemens-Martin  process 
was  built  in  1868  by  Frederick  J.  Slade  for  Cooper,  Hewitt 
&  Co.,  owners  of  the  works  of  the  New  Jersey  Steel  and  Iron 
Company,  at  Trenton,  New  Jersey.  The  building  of  this  fur- 
nace was  commenced  in  the  spring  of  1868,  and  in  December 
of  the  same  year  it  was  successfully  put  in  operation. 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  423 

The  Pernot  furnace  is  a  modification  of  the  open-hearth 
process  which  has  been  introduced  into  the  United  States 
from  France,  but,  while  producing  good  steel,  it  is  not  likely 
to  grow  in  favor  because  of  the  great  trouble  and  expense, 
which  are  necessary  to  keep  it  in  working  order.  The  Pon- 
sard  furnace  is  another  modification,  but  it  has  not  been  ex- 
perimented with  in  this  country  and  is  not  likely  to  be. 

The  first  successful  application  in  this  country  of  the 
Siemens  regenerative  gas  furnace  to  the  puddling  of  iron  was 
made  under  the  direction  of  William  F.  Durfee  at  the  roll- 
ing mill  of  the  American  Silver  Steel  Company,  at  Bridge- 
port, Connecticut,  in  1869.  Prior  to  this  event  an  unsuccess- 
ful attempt  was  made  to  accomplish  the  same  result  at  the 
Eagle  rolling  mill  of  James  Wood  &  Co.,  on  Saw  Mill  run, 
near  Pittsburgh. 

Experimental  works  were  erected  at  Pittsburgh  in  1877 
by  Park,  Brother  &  Co.,  in  conjunction  with  Miller,  Metcalf 
&  Parkin,  for  the  manufacture  of  refined  iron  directly  from 
the  ore  by  a  process  invented  by  Dr.  Siemens  and  success- 
fully tested  by  him  at  his  experimental  works  at  Towcester, 
England.  The  process  embodies  the  application  of  the  Sie- 
mens gas  furnace.  The  experiment  was  abandoned  in  1879, 
the  results  not  being  satisfactory.  The  same  process  was 
subsequently  applied  at  Tyrone  Forges,  in  Pennsylvania,  by 
Anderson  &  Co.,  of  Pittsburgh.  In  1881  Robert  J.  Anderson 
and  his  associates,  under  the  name  of  the  Siemens-Anderson 
Steel  Company,  built  extensive  works  of  the  same  character 
at  Pittsburgh.  Neither  the  enterprise  at  Tyrone  Forges  nor 
the  last-mentioned  enterprise  at  Pittsburgh  was  long  in  op- 
eration. Other  processes  for  the  manufacture  of  iron  or  steel 
directly  from  the  ore  have  been  tried  in  this  country  and 
have  commended  themselves  more  or  less  to  popular  favor, 
all  being  used  in  connection  with  the  open-hearth  furnace. 
The  Adams  direct  process  has  been  in  use  at  Indianapolis, 
Indiana,  and  at  Pittsburgh.  Some  preparations  have  been 
made  to  introduce  it  at  other  places.  The  Carbon  Iron  Com- 
pany has  in  successful  operation  at  Pittsburgh  another  direct 
process ;  and  at  Brewster,  in  Putnam  county,  New  York,  the 
Conley-Lancaster  direct  process  has  attracted  some  attention. 

In  an  official  report  by  Dr.  Wm.  M.  Sweet,  special  agent 


424  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

for  the  collection  of  the  statistics  of  iron  and  steel  in  the 
census  year  1890,  dated  on  October  31, 1890,  we  find  the  fol- 
lowing statement  concerning  the  manufacture  of  basic  open- 
hearth  steel  in  the  United  States. 

The  first  basic  steel  made  in  the  United  States  was  produced  experi- 
mentally at  Steelton,  Pennsylvania,  by  the  Pennsylvania  Steel  Company, 
on  May  24,  1884,  in  a  Bessemer  converter.  The  beginning  of  the  manu- 
facture of  basic  steel  in  this  country  as  a  commercial  product,  however, 
dates  from  1888,  on  the  28th  of  March  of  which  year  the  first  basic  open- 
hearth  steel  was  produced  at  the  Homestead  steel  works  of  Carnegie, 
Phipps  &  Company  Limited,  at  Homestead,  near  Pittsburgh,  Pennsyl- 
vania. Since  that  date  the  manufacture  of  basic  open-hearth  steel  has 
been  continued  at  these  works,  and  during  1890  this  firm  commenced  the 
erection  of  eight  additional  open-hearth  furnaces  for  the  manufacture  of 
basic  steel,  of  which  number  four  are  now  in  operation  and  the  remain- 
ing four  furnaces  are  expected  to  be  ready  for  working  in  a  short  time. 
When  completed  these  works  will  contain  16  open-hearth  furnaces  pre- 
pared to  manufacture  basic  steel.  The  manufacture  of  basic  steel  is  now 
also  regularly  carried  on  at  the  Steelton  works  of  the  Pennsylvania  Steel 
Company,  wrhere  a  combination  of  the  Bessemer  and  open-hearth  proc- 
esses is  used.  During  1890  the  Henderson  Steel  and  Manufacturing 
Company,  at  Birmingham,  Alabama,  produced  steel  experimentally  by  the 
basic  process.  Since  the  close  of  the  census  year  the  Southern  Iron 
Company  has  successfully  commenced  the  manufacture  of  basic  open- 
hearth  steel  at  its  works  at  Chattanooga,  Tennessee,  [the  exact  date  of 
this  event  being  September  15, 1890.]  The  Pottstown  Iron  Company,  at 
Pottstown,  Pennsylvania,  has  also  produced  steel  by  the  basic  process. 

The  total  production  of  basic  steel  in  the  United  States  during  the 
census  year  1890  [ending  on  June  30, 1890,]  amounted  to  62,173  tons  of 
2,000  pounds,  nearly  all  of  which  was  made  by  the  basic  open-hearth 
method,  a  small  part  being  produced  by  the  duplex  process,  a  combina- 
tion of  the  Bessemer  and  open-hearth  methods. 

The  production  of  basic  steel  by  the  open-hearth  and  du- 
plex processes  in  the  calendar  year  1890  probably  amount- 
ed to  about  90,000  net  tons,  or  over  one-seventh  of  the  open- 
hearth  production  of  the  year.  On  August  24,  1891,  basic 
steel  was  successfully  produced  in  the  Bessemer  converter 
of  the  Southern  Iron  Company,  at  Chattanooga,  Tennessee. 
This  was  the  first  basic  Bessemer  steel  produced  in  the  South. 

The  production  of  open-hearth  steel  in  the  United  States 
in  1870  was  only  1,500  net  tons,  and  in  1873  it  was  only  3,500 
tons.  The  production  in  the  census  year  1880  was  84,302  net 
tons.  Only  9,105  tons  of  rails  were  made.  At  the  close  of 
the  census  year  1880  there  were  37  completed  open-hearth 
furnaces  in  the  United  States.  Since  1884  the  production  of 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES. 


425 


open-hearth  steel  has  steadily  increased,  amounting  in  1890  to 
574,820  net  tons.  Only  4,018  tons  of  rails  were  made,  nearly 
all  in  California.  The  total  number  of  completed  open-hearth 
steel  works  in  the  United  States  at  the  close  of  1890  was  62. 

Our  open-hearth  steel  industry  is  already  an  important 
factor  in  supplying  the  domestic  demand  for  steel  for  all 
purposes  for  which  Bessemer  steel  and  the  ordinary  qualities 
of  crucible  steel  may  be  used.  This  industry  is  destined  to 
be  still  further  developed  in  the  immediate  future. 

The  following  table  shows  in  net  tons  the  production  of 
open-hearth  steel  in  the  United  States  from  1870  to  1890. 


Years. 

Net  tons. 

Years. 

' 
!  Net  tons. 

1 

Years. 

Net  tons. 

1870 

1  500 

1877 

25  031 

1884 

131  617 

1871  

2,000 

1878...  

36,126 

1885  

149,381 

1872 

3  000 

1879 

56  290 

1886 

245  °50 

1873 

3  500 

1880 

|   112  953 

1887 

360  717 

1874 

7  000 

1881 

j   146  946 

1888 

352  036 

1875 

9  050 

1882 

160  549 

1889 

419  488 

1876 

21  490 

1883 

i   133  679 

1890 

574  820 

Great  Britain  is  the  largest  producer  of  open-hearth  steel 
in  the  world,  and  in  this  branch  of  the  steel  industry  the 
United  States  is  still  a  long  distance  behind  its  great  iron 
and  steel  rival.  Only  a  small  part  of  Great  Britain's  annual 
production  is  made  by  the  basic  process.  The  following  table 
gives  in  gross  tons  the  production  of  open-hearth  steel  in 
Great  Britain  from  1879  to  1890. 


Years. 

Gross  tons. 

Years. 

Gross  tons. 

Years. 

Gross  tons. 

1879 

175,000 

1883 

455500 

1887 

981  104 

1880  

251,000 

1884  

475250 

1888 

1  292  742 

1881  

338,000 

1885  

583  918 

1889 

1  429  169 

1882  

436,000 

1886  

694150 

1890  

1,564,200 

' 

The  distinguished  scientist,  Dr.  Charles  William  Siemens, 
died  suddenly  at  London,  on  November  20, 1883,  of  rupture 
of  the  heart,  produced  by  a  fall  in  Park  Lane.  He  was  born 
at  Lenthe,  in  Hanover,  on  the  4th  of  April,  1823,  and  was 
consequently  in  his  61st  year  at  the  time  of  his  death.  In 
April  of  the  year  in  which  he  died  the  honor  of  knighthood 
was  conferred  upon  him  for  his  distinguished  services  as  a 
scientist.  He  was  thereafter  known  as  Sir  William  Siemens. 


426  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER  XLVIII. 

THE   EARLY  HISTORY   OF  IRON   RAILS  IN  THE 
UNITED   STATES. 

THE  influence  of  railroads  upon  the  development  of  the 
iron  and  steel  industries  of  the  United  States  has  been  so 
great  that  we  may  appropriately  present  in  this  chapter  the 
leading  facts  connected  with  the  laying  of  the  first  rails  upon 
American  railroads  and  with  the  manufacture  of  the  first 
American  rails. 

The  first  railroads  in  the  United  States  were  built  to 
haul  gravel,  stone,  mineral  coal,  and  other  heavy  materials, 
and  were  all  short,  the  longest  not  exceeding  a  few  miles  in 
length.  Strictly  speaking  they  were  tramroads  and  not  rail- 
roads. One  of  these  was  built  on  Beacon  Hill,  in  Boston,  by 
Silas  Whitney,  in  1807 ;  another  by  Thomas  Leiper,  in  Dela- 
ware county,  Pennsylvania,  in  1809 ;  and  another  at  Bear 
Creek  furnace,  in  Armstrong  county,  Pennsylvania,  in  1818. 
The  tracks  of  these  roads  were  composed  of  wooden  rails. 
Other  short  tramroads  were  built  at  various  places  early  in 
this  century  and  were  similarly  constructed.  In  George  W. 
Smith's  notes  on  Wood's  Treatise  on  Railroads  (1832)  it  is 
stated  that  in  1816  the  first  railroad  in  the  United  States 
on  which  self-acting  inclined  planes  were  used  was  "  built 
by  Mr.  Boggs,"  on  the  Kiskiminetas  river,  in  Western  Penn- 
sylvania. This  road  was  used  to  convey  bituminous  coal  to 
Andrew  Boggs's  salt  works  below  Saltsburg. 

Prior  to  1809  Oliver  Evans,  of  Philadelphia,  to  whom 
as  much  as  to  any  other  person  the  honor  of  inventing  the 
locomotive  is  due,  urged  in  repeated  addresses  to  the  public 
the  construction  of  a  passenger  railroad  from  Philadelphia  to 
New  York,  and  in  that  year  he  unsuccessfully  attempted  to 
form  a  company  for  this  purpose.  In  1812  Colonel  John  Ste- 
vens, of  Hoboken,  New  Jersey,  published  a  pamphlet  recom- 
mending the  building  of  a  passenger  railroad  from  Albany 
to  Lake  Erie,  but  his  suggestions  were  not  heeded.  In  the 
History  of  Morris  County,  New  Jersey,  Mr.  Halsey  says  :  "  As 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  427 

early  as  1815  a  railroad,  either  of  wood  or  iron,  was  char- 
tered from  the  Delaware  river  near  Trenton  to  the  Raritan 
near  New  Brunswick.  This  was  the  first  railroad  chartered 
in  America.  It  was  never  built." 

On  April  7, 1823,  the  New  York  legislature  chartered  the 
Delaware  and  Hudson  Canal  Company  to  construct  a  canal 
and  railroad  from  the  coal  fields  of  Pennsylvania  to  the 
Hudson  river  at  Rondout,  in  New  York.  The  canal  was 
completed  in  1828,  but  the  railroad  was  not  completed  until 
1829.  The  latter  was  16  miles  long,  and  extended  from 
Honesdale  to  Carbondale.  It  was  built  to  carry  coal. 

In  1826  the  Quincy  Railroad,  in  Massachusetts,  4  miles 
long,  including  branches,  was  built  by  Gridley  Bryant  and 
Colonel  T.  H.  Perkins  to  haul  granite  blocks  from  the  Quincy 
quarries  to  the  port  of  Neponset.  The  rails  of  this  road  were 
made  of  wood,  but  strapped  with  iron  plates  3  inches  wide 
and  \  of  an  inch  thick.  In  1827  the  Mauch  Chunk  Railroad, 
in  Carbon  county,  Pennsylvania,  9  miles  long,  with  4  miles  of 
sidings,  was  built  to  connect  the  coal  mines  of  the  Lehigh 
Coal  and  Navigation  Company  with  the  Lehigh  river.  Its 
rails  were  made  of  wood  and  strapped  with  iron.  Gordon, 
in  his  Gazetteer  of  the  State  of  Pennsylvania,  says  of  this  road  : 
"  The  railway  is  of  timber,  about  20  feet  long,  4  inches  by  5, 
and  set  in  cross-pieces  made  of  cloven  trees  placed  3J  feet 
from  each  other  and  secured  by  wedges.  The  rail  is  shod  on 
the  upper  and  inner  edge  with  a  flat  bar  of  iron  2J  inches 
wide  and  •£  of  an  inch  thick."  In  the  Philadelphia  Rail- 
way World  for  May  8, 1875,  Mr.  Solomon  W.  Roberts  says  of 
the  Mauch  Chunk  road  :  "  It  was  laid  mostly  on  the  turnpike, 
and  was  a  wooden  track,  with  a  gauge  of  3  feet  7  inches,  and 
the  wooden  rails  were  strapped  with  common  merchant  bar 
iron,  the  flat  bars  being  about  Ij-  inches  wide  and  £  of  an 
inch  thick.  The  holes  for  the  spikes  were  drilled  by  hand. 
Although  a  great  deal  of  bar  iron  of  somewhat  varying  sizes 
was  bought  for  the  purpose  the  supply  fell  short,  and  to 
prevent  delay  in  opening  the  road  strips  of  hard  wood  were 
spiked  down  in  place  of  iron  on  about  a  mile  and  a  half  or 
two  miles  of  the  road,  as  a  temporary  expedient." 

Mr.  Roberts  relates  that  the  Lehigh  Coal  and  Navigation 
Company  made  a  short  section  of  experimental  railroad  at  its 


428  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Mauch  Chunk  foundry  in  the  summer  of  1826.  "  The  idea 
then  was  to  make  a  road  with  rails  and  chairs  of  cast  iron, 
like  those  in  use  at  the  coal  mines  in  the  North  of  England. 
After  casting  a  good  many  rails,  each  about  four  feet  long,  the 
plan  was  given  up  on  account  of  its  being  too  expensive." 

In  1826  the  New  York  legislature  granted  a  charter  for 
the  construction  of  the  Mohawk  and  Hudson  Railroad,  for 
the  carriage  of  freight  and  passengers  from  Albany  to  Sche- 
nectady,  a  distance  of  17  miles.  Work  on  this  road,  however, 
was  not  commenced  until  August,  1830.  It  was  opened  for 
travel  on  September  12, 1831. 

On  February  28, 1827,  the  Maryland  legislature  granted  a 
charter  for  the  construction  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Rail- 
road, which  was  the  first  railroad  in  the  United  States  that 
was  opened  for  the  conveyance  of  passengers.  Its  construc- 
tion was  commenced  on  July  4,  1828,  the  venerable  Charles 
Carroll,  of  Carrollton,  laying  the  corner-stone.  In  1829  the 
track  was  finished  to  Vinegar  Hill,  a  distance  of  about  7 
miles,  and  "  cars  were  put  upon  it  for  the  accommodation  of 
the  officers  and  to  gratify  the  curious  by  a  ride."  Mr.  Poor, 
in  his  Manual  of  the  Railroads  of  tJie  United  States,  says  that 
the  road  was  opened  for  travel  from  Baltimore  to  Ellicott's 
Mills,  a  distance  of  13  miles,  on  May  24, 1830.  The  Washing- 
ton branch  was  opened  from  Relay  to  Bladensburg  on  July 
20,  1834,  and  to  Washington  City  on  August  25,  1834. 

The  next  passenger  railroad  that  was  undertaken  in  the 
United  States  was  the  Charleston  and  Hamburg  Railroad,  in' 
South  Carolina,  which  was  chartered  on  December  19,  1827. 
Six  miles  of  the  road  were  completed  in  1829,  but  they  were 
not  opened  to  the  public  until  December  6,  1830,  when  a  lo- 
comotive was  placed  on  the  track.  The  road  was  complet- 
ed in  September,  1833,  a  distance  of  135  miles.  At  that  time 
it  was  the  longest  continuous  line  of  railroad  in  the  world. 
The  Columbia  branch  was  opened  on  November  1,  1840,  and 
the  Camden  branch  on  June  26,  1848.  We  need  not  further 
note  the  beginning  of  early  American  railroads. 

The  rails  used  on  the  Charleston  and  Hamburg  and  the 
Mohawk  and  Hudson  railroads  were  made  of  wood,  with  flat 
bar  iron  nailed  on  their  upper  surface.  A  writer  in  Brown's 
History  of  the  First  Locomotives  in  America  says  that  the  track 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  429 

of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  consisted  of  cedar  cross- 
pieces  and  of  string-pieces  of  yellow  pine  "  from  12  to  24  feet 
long  and  6  inches  square,  and  slightly  beveled  on  the  top  of 
the  upper  side  for  the  flange  of  the  wheels,  which  was  at  that 
time  on  the  outside.  On  these  string-pieces  iron  rails  were 
placed  and  securely  nailed  down  with  wrought-iron  nails,  4 
inches  long.  After  several  miles  of  this  description  of  road 
had  been  made  long  granite  slabs  were  substituted  for  the 
cedar  cross-pieces  and  the  yellow-pine  stringers.  Beyond 
Vinegar  Hill  these  huge  blocks  of  this  solid  material  could 
be  seen  deposited  along  the  track,  and  gangs  of  workmen 
engaged  in  the  various  operations  of  dressing,  drilling,  lay- 
ing, and  affixing  the  iron."  Brown  says  that  "  iron  strips 
were  laid,  for  miles  and  miles,  on  stone  curbs  on  the  Balti- 
more and  Ohio  Railroad."  Appletons'  American  Cyclopaedia 
says  that  the  iron  used  was  i  and  f  of  an  inch  thick,  and 
from  2^  to  4J-  inches  wide,  and  that  the  heads  of  the  spikes 
which  fastened  it  were  countersunk  in  the  iron. 

Before  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  had  been  built 
to  Point  of  Rocks  in  1832  "  wrought-iron  rails  of  the  English 
mode,"  says  Brown,  had  been  laid  down  on  a  part  of  the  line. 
It  had  been  found  in  practice  that  the  strap  rail  would  be- 
come loosened  from  the  wooden  or  stone  stringer,  and  that 
the  ends  of  it,  called  "  snakes'  heads,"  were  liable  to  be  forced 
by  the  wheels  through  the  bottom  of  the  cars,  to  the  jeopardy 
of  the  passengers.  The  English  rails  obviated  this  inconve- 
nience and  risk.  Some  account  of  these  rails  is  here  given. 

About  the  time  when  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad 
was  finished  to  Point  of  Rocks  various  patterns  of  heavy 
rolled  iron  rails  were  in  use  in  England.  The  first  of  these 
to  be  used  was  the  fish-bellied  rail,  which  was  invented  by 
John  Birkinshaw,  of  the  Bedlington  iron  works,  and  patented 
in  October,  1820,  and  which  fitted  into  a  cast-iron  chair.  A 
thin  wedge,  or  key,  of  wrought  iron  was  driven  between  the 
inside  of  the  chair  and  the  rail,  to  keep  the  latter  firmly  in 
its  place,  and  the  operation  of  "  driving  keys  "  had  to  be  re- 
peated almost  every  day. 

The  BirkinsKaw~rail  was  used  on  the  Stockton  and  Dar- 
lington Railroad  in  England,  which  was  opened  in  September, 
1825,  and  was  the  first  railroad  in  the  world  that  was  opened 


430  THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 

for  general  freight  traffic  and  passenger  travel.  The  greater 
part  of  the  Stockton  and  Darlington  road,  which  was  37  miles 
long,  was  laid  with  rolled  rails  of  this  pattern,  weighing  28 
pounds  to  the  yard ;  a  small  part  of  the  line  was  laid  with 
fish-bellied  cast-iron  rails.  The  Liverpool  and  Manchester 
Railroad,  which  was  opened  in  September,  1830,  and  which 
was  the  second  railroad  built  in  England  for  general  business 
in  the  transportation  of  freight  and  passengers,  used  rails 
which  were  also  of  the  Birkinshaw  pattern.  "  The  rails  used 
were  made  of  forged  iron,  in  lengths  of  15  feet  each,  and 
weighed  175  pounds  each.  At  the  distance  of  every  3  feet 
the  rail  rests  on  blocks  of  stone.  Into  each  block  two  holes, 
6  inches  deep  and  1  inch  in  diameter,  are  drilled ;  into  these 
are  driven  oak  plugs,  and  the  cast-iron  chairs  into  which  the 
rails  are  fitted  are  spiked  down  to  the  plugs,  forming  a  struct- 
ure of  great  solidity."  This  road  was  about  31  miles  long. 

The  Clarence  rail  was  an  English  improvement  on  the 
Birkinshaw  rail ;  it  also  rested  in  a  chair,  but  it  did  not  have 
the  fish-belly,  its  upper  and  lower  surfaces  being  parallel  to 
each  other.  Rails  of  the  Clarence  pattern  were  used  on  the 
Allegheny  Portage  Railroad  in  Pennsylvania,  which  was  fin- 
ished in  1833,  and  many  of  the  stone  blocks  on  which  they 
were  laid  can  yet  be  seen  in  its  abandoned  bed.  The  Co- 
lumbia and  Philadelphia  Railroad  was  opened  on  the  16th 
of  April,  1834.  On  a  small  part  of  this  road  flat  rails  were 
laid,  either  directly  on  granite  blocks  or  on  wooden  string- 
pieces,  but  on  the  greater  part  of  it  Clarence  rails  were  laid 
on  stone  blocks.  On  the  Boston  and  Lowell  Railroad,  which 
was  chartered  in  June,  1830,  and  completed  in  1835,  stone 
cross-ties  were  at  first  laid,  some  of  which  wrere  in  use  as  late 
as  1852.  On  one  track  of  this  road  the  fish-bellied  Birkin- 
shaw rail  was  used  and  on  -the  other  the  H  rail  was  laid. 
This  rail,  which  rested  in  a  chair,  had  a  web,  or  flange,  simi- 
lar to  that  of  the  modern  T  rail.  The  H  rail  wras  laid  on 
the  Washington  branch  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad. 
It  was  15  feet  in  length,  weighed  40  pounds  .to  the  yard,  and 
was  laid  on  string-pieces  of  wood.  Wooden  cross-ties  have 
been  substituted  for  stone  blocks  on  all  American  railroads. 

The  flat  rail  which  was  first  used  on  American  railroads 
continued  in  use  for  many  years,  notwithstanding  the  difli- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  431 

culty  experienced  in  keeping  it  in  its  place.  At  first  the  holes 
for  the  spikes  were  drilled  by  hand.  The  flat  rails  that  were 
afterwards  made  were  indented,  or  countersunk,  at  regular 
distances  in  their  passage  through  the  rolls.  The  centre  of 
the  countersunk  surface  was  then  punched  through  for  the 
admission  of  the  spike.  As  late  as  1837,  when  the  Erie  and 
Kalamazoo  Railroad  was  in  course  of  construction  from  To- 
ledo to  Adrian,  it  was  proposed  to  put  down  wooden  rails  of 
oak  studding  4  inches  square,  and  to  draw  the  cars  by  horses. 
But  wiser  counsels  prevailed,  and  by  great  exertions  sufficient 
funds  were  obtained  to  enable  the  management  to  iron  the 
road  with  flat  rails  f  of  an  inch  thick.  In  1839  the  first 
railroad  in  Illinois,  known  as  the  Northern  Cross,  which  now 
forms  a  part  of  the  Wabash  system,  was  completed.  The  road 
extended  from  Jacksonville  to  Meredosia,  a  distance  of  24 
miles ;  it  was  built  by  the  State  and  laid  with  flat  iron.  Mr. 
Poor  says :  "  It  was  not  until  1850  that  the  longitudinal  sill 
and  the  flat  rail  were  entirely  removed  from  the  Utica  and 
Schenectady  Railroad,  the  most  important  link  in  the  New 
York  Central  line."  Flat  rails  were  in  use  on  many  other 
railroads  in  this  country  after  1850,  and  may  yet  be  seen  on 
some  Southern  railroads.  They  are  also  in  use  on  street  rail- 
roads and  on  some  mine  roads. 

The  following  extract  from  a  New  York  newspaper,  dated 
May  30, 1844,  shows  the  risk  to  which  travelers  were  subject- 
ed who  journeyed  on  railroads  the  tracks  of  which  were  laid 
with  flat  rails. 

RAILROAD  CASUALTY. — The  cars  on  the  railroad  a  short  distance  east  of 
Rome,  New  York,  came  in  contact  with  a  "  snake  head  "  on  Saturday  morn- 
ing which  threw  several  of  the  passenger  cars  and  the  mail  car  off  the 
track.  The  crush  was  tremendous,  and  the  cars  were  torn  to  splinters, 
though  happily  no  lives  were  lost.  Mr.  Peter  Van  Wie  was  badly  bruised 
and  some  others  slightly  injured. 

Cast-iron  rails  were  made  in  this  country  in  small  quan- 
tities during  the  early  years  of  our  railroad  history,  notwith- 
standing the  unfavorable  experiment  in  their  use  at  Mauch 
Chunk  which  is  noted  by  Mr.  Roberts.  Johnson,  in  his  Notes 
on  the  Use  of  Anthracite,  published  in  1841,  records  a  series  of 
tests  made  in  that  year  with  rails  for  mine  roads  which  were 
cast  in  a  foundry  from  pig  iron  made  at  the  Pottsville  fur- 


432  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

nace  of  William  Lyman.  These  rails  were  6  feet  long  and 
were  of  various  weights.  It  is  particularly  stated  of  one  rail 
which  was  tested  that  it  was  "  intended  to  sustain  locomo- 
tives." The  rails  were  bulbous  at  both  the  top  and  bottom, 
like  the  double-headed,  or  H,  rail  now  used  in  England,  but 
at  each  end,  for  about  3  inches  along  the  base,  they  had 
flanges  for  securing  them  to  the  cross-ties,  which  caused  an 
end  view  of  them  to  resemble  that  of  a  modern.  T  rail. 

Many  years  elapsed  after  the  first  railroad  was  built  in 
this  country  before  any  other  than  flat  iron  rails  were  made 
in  American  rolling  mills.  Among  the  proposals  to  furnish 
heavy  rails  for  the  Columbia  and  Philadelphia  Railroad,  re- 
ceived in  May,  1831,  there  were  none  for  American  rails,  and 
the  whole  quantity  was  purchased  in  England.  It  is  neces- 
sary to  explain  here  that  previous  to  the  passage  of  the 
tariff  act  of  September  11,  1841,  rails  were  admitted  into  the 
United  States  free  of  duty  when  proof  was  furnished  that 
they  had  actually  been  laid  on  railroads  and  inclined  planes. 
On  the  passage  of  that  act  and  the  more  comprehensive 
tariff  act  of  1842  American  capitalists  began  to  prepare  for 
the  manufacture  of  heavy  rails. 

Early  in  1844  there  were  still  no  facilities  in  this  country 
for  the  manufacture  of  heavy  iron  rails  to  supply  the  wants 
of  the  4,185  miles  of  American  railroad  which  existed  at  the 
beginning  of  that  year,  and  of  a  few  hundred  additional 
miles  which  were  then  projected.  In  a  memorial  which  was 
laid  before  Congress  in  that  year  the  Hon.  John  Tucker,  the 
president  of  the  Philadelphia  and  Reading  Railroad  Com- 
pany, and  afterwards  Assistant  Secretary  of  War,  made  the 
following  declaration  under  date  of  May  4,  1844. 

Immediately  on  the  line  of  the  road  are  rich  mines  of  iron  ore.  Last 
fall  and  winter  it  was  generally  known  in  that  section  of  the  State  through 
which  the  road  passes,  as  well  as  on  other  portions  of  it,  that  this  company 
intended  to  lay  a  second  track,  and  that  about  8,300  tons  of  railroad  iron 
was  wanted.  Public  proposals  were  issued  for  all  the  materials  required, 
except  the  iron.  The  iron  was  not  included  in  these  proposals  for  the  sim- 
ple reason  that  I  knew  that  it  could  not  be  furnished  in  this  country,  but  I 
had  interviews  with  several  of  the  largest  ironmasters,  and  freely  express- 
ed my  desire  to  contract  for  American  railroad  iron,  provided  it  could  be 
furnished  at  the  time  it  was  wanted.  I  received  no  proposition  to  deliver 
the  rolled  bars.  I  inclose  a  copy  of  a  letter  from  one  of  the  largest  iron- 
mongers in  the  State,  offering  cast-iron  rails,  which,  I  presume  you  are 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  433 

aware,  have  not  answered  any  good  purpose.  I  also  inclose  a  copy  of  my 
answer,  to  which  I  have  not  received  a  reply.  I  unhesitatingly  express  my 
conviction  that  the  railroad  iron  needed  by  this  company  could  not  have 
been  obtained  in  this  country,  at  the  time  they  required  it,  at  any  price ; 
and  I  am  equally  confident  that  there  are  no  parties  ready  to  contract  to 
deliver  such  iron  for  a  long  time  to  come.  This  company  was  therefore 
compelled  to  import  their  iron. 

The  following  is  the  correspondence  referred  to  above 
concerning  the  proposition  to  make  cast-iron  rails  for  the 
Philadelphia  and  Reading  Railroad  Company. 

PHILADELPHIA,  November  7,  1843. 

MR.  TUCKER.  DEAR  SIR  :  Since  my  conversation  with  you,  in  relation 
to  substituting  cast-iron  rails  for  your  new  track  of  rails  which  you  contem- 
plate laying  soon,  I  have  concluded  to  propose  to  you  that  I  should  cast 
eighteen  bar-rails  15  feet  long  from  the  model  in  the  Franklin  Institute,  as 
a  sample  of  the  strength  and  durability  of  rails  made  from  cast  iron.  The 
price  to  be  $30  per  ton  cash  upon  delivering  at  Broad  street. 

With  respect,  yours,        CLEMENT  B.  GRUBB. 
Direct  Lancaster,  Pennsylvania. 

OFFICE  OF  THE  PHILADELPHIA  AND  READING  RAILROAD  COMPANY,  -i 
PHILADELPHIA,  November — ,1843.       J 

CLEMENT  B.  GRUBB,  ESQ.,  Lancaster.  DEAR  SIR  :  I  duly  received  your 
communication  of  the  7th  instant.  This  company  is  not  disposed  to  make 
any  experiment  with  the  cast-iron  rails  on  their  own  account.  But  if  you 
choose  to  send  the  eighteen  bars  they  shall  be  laid  on  the  road;  and  if, 
after  a  trial  of  six  months,  they  are  found  to  answer  a  good  purpose  the 
company  will  pay  you  $30  per  ton  for  the  rails.  If.  they  are  not*  suitable  for 
4he  road  they  will  then  be  delivered  to  you,  the  company  merely  incurring 
the  expense  of  laying  down  and  taking  up  the  rails. 

Your  obedient  servant,        JOHN  TUCKER,  President. 

1  No  reply  to  this  letter  was  received.  The  8,300  tons  of 
rails  which  were  wanted  by  Mr.  Tucker,  and  which  he  was 
compelled  to  buy  in  England,  were  of  the  H  pattern,  then 
very  popular.  The  rails  weighed  60  pounds  to  the  yard  and 
cost  £5  10s.  per  ton  in  England. 

In  a  letter  dated  May  22, 1844,  which  formed  part  of  the 
above-mentioned  memorial  to  Congress,  Joseph  E.  Bloomfield 
made  the  following  statement. 

There  is  no  doubt  of  the  fact  that  there  are  no  establishments  for  the 
manufacture  of  railroad  iron  in  Pennsylvania  prepared  to  produce  a  moiety 
of  the  iron  required  for  the  railways  actually  commenced.  Mr.  Oakley,  of 
Brooklyn,  made  a  statement,  that  at  the  time  was  combated  and  denied, 
that  he  could  furnish  from  one  set  of  works  10,000  tons  of  railroad  iron  per 
annum.  This  is  so  palpably  incorrect  that  it  needs  no  refutation.  There 
is  no  iron  establishment  of  this  kind  in  this  country. 


434  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

On  the  24th  of  April,  1844,  th^  Hon.  Edward  Joy  Morris, 
a  member  of  Congress  from  Pennsylvania,  declared  that  "  not 
a  ton  of  T  rail  had  yet  been  made  in  this  country." 

The  manufacture  of  heavy  iron  rails  in  this  country  was 

Uommenced  early  in  1844  at  the  Mount  Savage  rolling  mill, 
n  Alleghany  county,  Maryland,  which  was  built  in  1843  by 
the  Maryland  and  New  York  Iron  and  Coal  Company  espe- 
cially to  roll  these  rails.  The  first  rair rolled  at  this  rolling 
mill,  and  in  honor  of  which  the  Franklin  Institute  of  Phila- 
delphia awarded  a  silver  medal  in  October,  1844,  (now  in  the 
museum  at  Ince  Blundell,  Lancashire,  England,)  was  an  in- 
verted U  rail,  known  in  Wales  as  the  Evans  patent,  of  the 
Dowlais  iron  works,  at  Merthyr  Tydvil.  -It  was  intended  to 
be  laid  on  a  wooden  longitudinal  sill  and  to  be  fastened  to  it 
by  an  iron  wedge,  keying  under  the  sill,  thus  dispensing  with 
outside  .fastenings.  This  rail  weighed  42  pounds  to  the  yard. 
About  500  tons  of  rails  of  this  pattern  were  rolled  early  in 
1844  and  laid  in  that  year  on  a  part  of  the  road  then  being 
built  between  Mount  Savage  and  Cumberland,  a  distance  of 
nine  miles.  In  that  year  rails  weighing  50  pounds  to  the 
yard  were  also  rolled  at  the  Mount  Savage  rolling  mill  for 
the  road  leading  from  Fall  River  to  Boston.  These  last  rails 
were  T  r.ails,  and  were  ordered  by  Colonel  Borden,  of  Fall 
River.  The  foregoing  information  we  have  obtained  from 
Mr.  Henry  Thomas  Weld,  of  Mount  Savage.  Mr.  Stephen 
S.  Lee,  of  the  old  firm  of  Manning  &  Lee,  of  Baltimore,  says 
that  in  1845  and  1846  the  firm  sold  to  Boston  purchasers  T 
rails  which  were  made  at  Mount  Savage.  The  Mount  Savage 
rolling  mill  was  still  rolling  rails  as  late  as  1856,  but  was 
dismantled  in  1875,  after  having  been  abandoned  for  many 
years.  Mr.  Weld  tells  us  that  U  rails  were  in  use  in  the  sid- 
ings of  the  Cumberland  and  Pennsylvania  Railroad  as  late  as 
1869.  We  have  a  piece  of  an  inverted  U  rail  in  our  office. 
The  Montour  rolling  mill,  at  Danville,  Pennsylvania,  was 
built  in  1845  expressly  to  roll  rails,  and  it  is  claimed  that  here 
were  rolled  in  October  of  that  year  the  first  T  rails  made  in 
the  United  States.  The  facts  above  presented  give  this  hon- 
or to  the  Mount  Savage  rolling  mill.  T-rail  rolls  were  made 
for  the  Montour  rolling  mill  by  Haywood  &  Snyder,  pro- 
prietors of  the  Colliery  iron  works  at  Pottsville,  the  work 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  435 

being  done  at  their  branch  establishment  at  Danville.  The 
Boston  iron  works  were  started  in  January,  1824,  to  manufact- 
ure cut  nails,  hoops,  and  tack  plates,  but  they  subsequently 
rolled  rails,  and  on  the  6th  of  May,  1846,  they  rolled  the  first 
T  rails  in  Massachusetts,  Ralph  Crooker  being  superintend- 
ent. In  1845  the  rolling  mill  of  Cooper  &  Hewitt  was  built 
at  Trenton,  New  Jersey,  to  roll  heavy  rails,  and  on  the  19th 
of  June,  1846,  their  first  T  rail  was  rolled.  About  the  1st  of 
September,  1846,  the  New  England  Iron  Company,  at  Provi- 
dence, Rhode  Island,  commenced  to  roll  T  rails.  The  first 
lot  of  these  rails  rolled  by  the  company  was  delivered  to  the 
Providence  and  Worcester  Railroad  on  September  11,  1846. 
T  rails  were  rolled  in  November,  1846,  at  Phoenixville,  Penn- 
sylvania; in  the  fall  of  the  same  year  at  the  Great  Western 
iron  works  at  Brady's  Bend,  Pennsylvania,  and  at  the  Lack- 
awanna  iron  works  at  Scranton,  Pennsylvania ;  early  in  1847 
at  the  Bay  State  rolling  mill,  in  Boston,  then  owned  by 
the  Massachusetts  Iron  Company;  in  January,  1848,  at  the 
Rough-and-Ready  rolling  mill  at  Danville,  Pennsylvania ; 
and  in  the  same  year  at  Safe  Harbor,  Pennsylvania.  On 
May  10, 1848,  Manning  &  Lee,  the  agents  of  the  Avalon  iron 
works,  near  Baltimore,  Maryland,  contracted  to  obtain  at 
these  works  for  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  Company 
400  tons  of  U  rails,  to  weigh  51  pounds  to-  the  yard  and  to  be 
from  19  to  21  feet  in  length,  the  price  to  be  $65  per  gross  ton, 
delivered  at  Baltimore.  These  rails  were  made  in  1848.  All 
of  the  T  rails  made  at  the  mills  above  mentioned  were  roll- 
ed with  a  base  or  flange  similar  to  that  of  the  present  T  rail. 
Some  of  them  did  not  differ  greatly  from  the  H  rail,  and 
when  laid  rested,  like  it,  in  a  chair.  Indeed  the  H  rail  was 
sometimes  called  the  T  rail.  A  few  other  mills  rolled  heavy 
rails  before  1850,  but  at  the  beginning  of  that  year,  owing  to 
the  severity  of  foreign  competition  under  the  tariff  of  1846, 
only  two  out  of  fifteen  rail  mills  in  this  country  were  in 
operation. 

In  a  letter  dated  December  26,  1849,  the  Hon.  Abram  S. 
Hewitt  described  the  state  of  our  iron-rail  industry  at  that 
time  in  the  following  language  :  "  Of  fifteen  rail  mills  only 
two  are  in  operation,  doing  partial  work,  and  that  only  be- 
cause their  inland  position  secured  them  against  foreign  com- 


436  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

petition  for  the  limited  orders  of  neighboring  railroads,  and 
when  these  are  executed  not  a  single  rail  mill  will  be  at  work 
in  the  lanoV' 

From  A  History  of  the  Growth  of  the  Steam  Engine,  by  Rob- 
ert  H.  Thurston,  we  learn  that  the  T  rail  vwhich  is  now  in  gen- 
eral use  is  an  American  invention.  Professor  Thurston  says : 
"  Robert  L.  Stevens,  the  president  and  engineer  of  the  Cam- 
den  and  Amboy  Railroad,  and  a  distinguished  son  of  Colonel 
John  Stevens,  of  Hoboken,  was  engaged,  at  the  time  of  the 
opening  of  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  Railroad,  in  the 
construction  of  the  Camden  and  Amboy  Railroad.  It  was 
here  that  the  first  of  the  now  standard  form  of  T  rail  was 
laid  down.  It  was  of  malleable-  iron.  It  was  designed  by 
Mr.  Stevens,  and  is  known  in  the  United  States  as  the  '  Ste- 
vens '  rail.  In  Europe,  where  it  was  introduced  some  years 
afterwards,  it  is  sometimes  called  the  '  Vignoles  '  rail."  This 
name  is  derived  from  Charles  B.  Vignoles,  an  English  rail- 
road engineer,  who  visited  the  United  States  in  1817  and  re- 
mained here  several  years  in  the  practice  of  his  profession. 
The  first  Vignoles  rail  appears  to  have  had  a  wider  base  and 
a  shorter  stem  than  the  Stevens  rail.  (See  Life  of  Charles 
Blacker  Vignoles,  by  his  son,  1889,  page  224.)  Professor  Thurs- 
ton adds  that  a  part  of  the  track  of  the  Camden  and  Am- 
boy Railroad  at  Bordentown  was  laid  down  and  opened  for 
business  in  1831.  T  rails  were  laid  on  the  whole  line,  which 
crossed  the  State  of  New  Jersey. 

Through  the  courtesy  of  Professor  Thurston  we  have  been 
furnished  with  a  foe-simile  of  the  circular  issued  by  Mr.  Ste- 
vens in  1830,  inviting  proposals  from  British  manufacturers 
for  supplying  the  Camden  and  Amboy  Railroad  with  T  rails. 
It  will  be  found  in  our  report  on  iron  and  steel  forming  a 
part  of  the  tenth  census  (1880)  of  the  United  States.  In  this 
circular  Mr.  Stevens  specified  that  the  rail  which  he  desired 
to  have  rolled  should  have  a  base,  stem,  and  head  like  the 
T  rail  of  the  present  day,  the  rail  to  be  12  or  16  feet  long, 
and  to  be  laid  on  cross-ties,  but  that  it  should  have  "  projec- 
tions on  the  lower  flange  at  every  two  feet,"  where  it  would 
rest  on  the  ties. 

The  sides  of  the  rails  rolled  for  Mr.  Stevens  were  made 
straight,  and  without  "the  projections  on  the  lower  flange  at 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  437 

% 

every  two  feet"  which  were  specified  in  his  circular.  These 
projections  were  intended  to  serve  the  purposes  of  the  chairs 
then  in  use,  by  giving  a  broad  base  to  the  rail  at  its  connec- 
tion with  the  cross-ties.  They  were,  of  course,  not  necessary, 
but  that  the  rails  were  rolled  without  them  was  clearly  not 
in  accordance  with  Mr.  Stevens's  original  design.  However, 
he  may  truthfully  be  said  to  have  invented  the  T  rail.  It 
was  the  first  heavy  rail  made  which  dispensed  with  chairs. . 

Mr.  Francis  B.  Stevens,  of  Hoboken,  New  Jersey,  a  neph- 
ew of  Robert  L.  Stevens,  has  supplied  us  in  the  following 
letter  with  much  valuable  additional  information  concerning 
the  history  of  the  T  rail. 

HOBOKEN,  NEW  JERSEY,  May  31,  1881. 

DEAR  SIR  :  In  answer  to  your  letter  of  the  27th  instant  I  will  say  that 
I  have  always  believed  that  Robert  L.  Stevens  was  the  inventor  of  what  is 
called  the  T  rail,  and  also  of  the  method  of  fastening  it  by  spikes,  and  I 
have  never  known  his  right  to  the  invention  questioned. 

The  rail  of  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  Railroad,  on  its  opening,  in 
September,  1830,  was  of  wrought  iron,  divided  into  fish-bellied  sections, 
each  section  being  supported  by  a  cast-iron  chair,  to  which  it  was  secured 
by  a  wooden  wedge.  This  form  was  derived  from  the  old  cast-iron  fish- 
bellied  tram  rail,  cast  in  single  sections,  each  about  36  inches  long.  This 
wrought-iron  rail  was  afterwards  improved  by  making  its  bottom  straight 
uniformly  throughout  its  length. 

Mr.  Stevens's  invention  consisted  in  adding  the  broad  flange  on  the 
bottom,  with  a  base  sufficient  to  carry  the  load,  and  shaped  so  that  it  could 
be  secured  to  the  wood  below  it  by  spikes  with  hooked  heads ;  thus  dis- 
pensing with  the  cast-iron  chair,  and  making  the  rail  and  its  fastening  such 
as  it  now  is  in  common  use.  In  the  year  1836  and  frequently  afterwards  he 
spoke  to  me  about  his  invention  of  this  rail,  and  told  me  that  in  London, 
after  unsuccessful  applications  elsewhere  in  England,  shortly  after  the  open- 
ing of  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  Railroad,  he  had  applied  to  Mr.  Guest, 
a  member  of  Parliament,  who  had  large  rolling  mills  in  Wales,  to  take  a 
contract  to  make  his  rail  for  the  Camden  and  Amboy  Railroad,  of  which  he 
was  the  chief  engineer ;  that  Mr.  Guest  wished  to  take  the  contract,  but 
considered  that  it  would  be  impracticable  to  roll  the  rail  straight;  that, 
finally,  Mr.  Guest  agreed  to  go  to  Wales  with  him  and  make  a  trial ;  that 
great  difficulty  was  at  first  experienced,  as  the  rails  coming  from  the  rolls 
curled  like  snakes,  and  distorted  in  every  imaginable  way ;  that,  by  perse- 
verance, the  rail  was  finally  successfully  rolled ;  and  that  Mr.  Guest  took 
the  contract.  The  Camden  and  Amboy  Railroad,  laid  with  this  rail,  was 
opened  October  9,  1832,  two  years  after  the  opening  of  the  Liverpool  and 
Manchester  Railroad.  Of  this  I  was  a  witness. 

This  rail,  long  known  as  the  old  Camden  and  Amboy  rail,  differed  but 
little,  either  in  shape  or  proportions,  from  the  T  rail  now  in  common  use, 
but  weighed  only  36  pounds  to  the  yard.  For  the  next  six  or  eight  years 
after  the  opening  of  the  Camden  and  Amboy  Railroad  this  rail  was  but  little 


438  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

• 

used  here  or  abroad,  nearly  all  the  roads  built  in  the  United  States  using 
the  flat  iron  bar,  about  2}  inches  by  f  inch,  nailed  to  wooden  rails,  and  the 
English  continuing  to  use  the  chair  and  wedge. 

My  uncle  always  regretted  that  he  had  not  patented  his  invention. 
He  mentioned  to  me,  upwards  of  forty  years  ago,  that  when  advised  by  his 
friend,  Mr.  F.  B.  Ogden,  the  American  consul  at  Liverpool,  who  was  famil- 
iar with  the  circumstances  of  his  invention,  to  patent  it,  he  found  that  it 
was  too  late,  and  that  his  invention  had  become  public  property. 

Yours  Truly,     FRANCIS  B.  STEVENS. 

N 

Smith,  in  his  notes  on  Wood's  Treatise  on  Railroads,  thus 
describes  the  T  rail  which  was  laid  on  the  Camden  and  Am- 
boy  Railroad :  "  The  rails  are  of  rolled  iron,  16  feet  long,  2-J 
inches  wide  on  the  top,  3J  inches  at  the  bottom,  and  3£  deep  ; 
the  neck  half  inch  thick ;  the  weight  is  209  pounds  =  39T3g- 
pounds  per  yard ;  they  are  secured  by  clamps  of  iron,  riveted 
at  the  extremity  of  each  bar.  The  rails  are  attached  to  the 
stone  blocks  and  sleepers  by  means  of  nails  or  pins,  at  the 
sides,  driven  into  wooden  plugs;  chairs  are  dispensed  with." 

The  first  30-foot  rails  rolled  in  this  country  are  claimed 
to  have  been  rolled  at  the  Cambria  iron  works,  at  Johnstown, 
in  1855.  These  rails  were  perfectly  made,  but  there  being  no 
demand  for  them  they  were  used  in  the  tracks  of  the  Cam- 
bria Iron  Company.  It  is  claimed  that  the  first  30-foot  rails 
rolled  in  the  country  on  order  were  rolled  at  the  Montour 
rolling  mill,  at  Danville,  in  January,  1859,  for  the  Sunbury 
and  Erie  Railroad  Company.  The  first  60-foot,  or  double- 
length,  rails  rolled  in  this  country  were  rolled  by  the  Edgar 
Thomson  Steel  Company,  at  Bessemer  station,  near  Pitts- 
burgh, in  the  fall  of  1875,  and  were__of  steel.  In  1877  the 
Lackawanna  Iron  and  Coal  Company,  at  Scranton,  commenc- 
ed to  roll  60-foot  steel  rails.  At  the  Centennial  Exhibition 
at  Philadelphia,  in  1876,  the  Edgar  Thomson  Steel  Company 
exhibited  a  steel  rail  which  at  that  time  was  the  longest 
steel  rail  that  had  ever  been  rolled.  It  was  120  feet  long 
and  weighed  62  pounds  to  the  yard. 

As  late  as  1880  the  T  rail  was  not  much  used  in  Great 
Britain.  The  pattern  most  in  use  in  that  country  was  the 
double-headed,  or  H,  rail,  which  is  set  in  a  cast-iron  chair. 
The  bridge,  or  U,  rail  was  in  use  on  the  Great  Western  Rail- 
way and  on  some  other  British  railroads.  The  Clarence  rail 
was  used  on  the  Great  Eastern  Railway,  and  perhaps  on  some 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  439 

other  British  railroads.  In  the  United  States  the  T  rail  is 
now  almost  exclusively  used,  and  its  weight  per  yard  is  heav- 
ier than  formerly.  It  seems  strange  that  this  rail  should  not 
have  become  generally  popular  in  this  country  until  after 
1845,  having  been  used  as  early  as  1831.  We  may  here  men- 
tion that  the  various  patterns  of  rails  which  superseded  the 
flat  rail  were  long  known  as  edge  rails. 

The  first  locomotive  ta  run  upon  an  American  railroad 
was  the  Stourbridge  Lion.  It  was  first  used  at  Honesdale,  in 
Wayne  county,  Pennsylvania,  on  Saturday,  August  8,  1829, 
on  the  coal  railroad  of  the  Delaware  and  Hudson  Canal 
Company.  The  Stourbridge  Lion  was  built  in  England  and 
weighed  about  six  tons.  Its  use  was  not  long  continued  be- 
cause it  was  too  heavy  for  the  superstructure  of  a  large  part 
of  the  road.  The  first  locomotive  built  in  the .  United  States 
and  used  on  a  railroad  wras  the  Tom  Thumb,  which  was  built 
by  Peter  Cooper  at  Baltimore  and  successfully  experimented 
with  on  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  in  August,  1830. 
The  fuel  used  for  this  pioneer  American  locomotive  was  an- . 
thracjte  coal.  The  boiler  was  tubular,  and  for  want  of  spe- 
cially-constructed tubes  Mr.  Cooper  used  gun  barrels.  The 
locomotive,  which  was  also  its  own  tender,  did  not  weigh  a 
ton ;  the  boiler  was  about  as  large  as  a  flour  barrel.  Strictly 
speaking  it  was  a  working  model,  but  it  worked  well  and  led 
the  way  to  the  construction  of  more  powerful  locomotives. 
Mr.  Cooper  was  his  own  engineer.  The  first  American  loco- 
motive that  was  built  for  actual  service  was  the  Best  Friend 
of  Charleston,  which  was  built  at  the  West  Point  foundry,  in 
New  York  city,  for  the  Charleston  and  Hamburg  Railroad, 
and  was  successfully  put  in  use  on  that  road  in  December, 
1830.  On  the  Mohawk  and  Hudson  Railroad,  the  Allegheny 
Portage  Railroad,  the  Columbia  and  Philadelphia  Railroad, 
and  a  few  other  railroads  horse-power  was  exclusively  used 
for  some  time  after  they  were  opened  in  the  decade  between 
1830  and  1840. 

Mr.  Brown  informs  us  that  "  the  first  charter  for  what 
are  termed  city  passenger  or  horse  railroads  was  obtained  in 
the  city  of  New  York  and  known  as  the  New  York  and  Har- 
lem, and  this  was  the  first  road  of  the  kind  ever  constructed, 
and  was  opened  in  1832.  No  other  road  of  the  kind  was 


440 


THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


completed  till  1852,  when  the  Sixth  Avenue  was  opened  to 
the  public. " 

The  first  elevated  city  passenger  railroad  ever  built  was 
the  Greenwich  street  railroad  in  New  York,  which  was  com- 
menced in  1866  and  has  been  in  successful  operation  since 
1872.  It  is  now  known  as  the  Ninth  Avenue  Elevated  Kail- 
way.  The  next  project  of  this  character  was  the  Gilbert 
elevated  railroad,  in  New  York,  for  the  construction  of  which 
a  charter  was  granted  in  1872.  New  York  city  has  now 
several  elevated  local  passenger  railroads.  As  late  as  1883 
only  one  American  city,  Brooklyn,  had  copied  the  exam- 
ple of  New  York  in  building  railroads  of  this  class,  but  in 
1891  Chicago  also  had  an  elevated  railroad. 

The  first  elevated  railroad  constructed  in  this  country  in 
connection  with  a  regular  freight  and  passenger  railroad  was 
undertaken  by  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Company  in  1880 
and  finished  in  1881.  It  constitutes  an  extension  of  the 
main  line  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  to  the  heart  of  the 
city  of  Philadelphia,  and  is  over  a  mile  long. 

The  production  of  iron  rails  in  the  United  States  has 
been  as  follows  in  net  tons  from  1849  to  1890.  Since  the 
beginning  of  1883  the  manufacture  of  iron  rails  has  been 
almost  entirely  superseded  by  the  manufacture  of  steel  rails. 
Such  iron  rails  as  have  since  been  made  have  been  chiefly 
street  rails  and  light  rails  for  mines  and  tramways. 


Years. 

Net  tons. 

Years. 

Net  tons. 

Years. 

Net  tons. 

1849 

24  318 

1863...   . 

275  768 

1877  

332,540 

1850 

44,083 

1864  

335,369 

1878  

322,890 

1851 

50,603 

1865  

356,292 

1879  

420,160 

1852 

62  478 

1866 

430778 

1880 

493  762 

1853 

87864 

1867 

459558 

1881 

488581 

1854 

108  016 

1868 

499489 

1882  

227,874 

1855 

138  674 

1869  

583,936 

1883   

64,954 

1856 

180018 

1870  

586,000 

1884  

25,560 

1857 

161,918 

1871  

737,483 

1885  

14,815 

1858  . 

163,712 

1872  

905,930 

1886  

23.679 

1859 

195  454 

1873 

761  062 

1887 

23,062 

1860 

205038 

1874.  . 

584469 

1888    

14,252 

1861 

189  818 

1875  

501  649 

1889  

10,258 

1862 

213  912 

1876  

467,168 

1890  

15,548 

The   excellent  wearing   qualities   of  American   iron  rails 
were  well  illustrated  at  the  Philadelphia  Exhibition  in  1876, 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES. 


441 


when  the  Cambria  Iron  Company  exhibited  an  iron  rail 
which  had  been  in  use  nineteen  years,  three  rails  which  had 
been  in  use  eleven  years,  and  five  rails  which  had  been  in  use 
ten  years,  all  under  severe  wear.  The  same  company  also 
exhibited  two  iron  rails  which  bridged  a  gap  12  feet  wide  and 
12  feet  deep  that  had  been  washed  out  under  the  track  of  a 
western  railroad,  and  which  carried  safely  over  the  gap  an 
engine  weighing  57,400  pounds  and  a  train  of  seven  cars. 

In  1879  the  American  Iron  and  Steel  Association  collect- 
ed a  mass  of  statistics  from  American  railroad  companies 
relative  to  the  wear  of  domestic  and  foreign  steel  rails,  and 
the  general  conclusion  was  derived  that  American  steel  rails 
were  superior  to  English  steel  rails,  while  the  testimony  of 
the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Company  demonstrated  that  the 
American  steel  rails  which  had  been  laid  in  its  tracks  were 
wearing  almost  twice  as  well  as  the  foreign  steel  rails  it  was 
also  using. 

In  Poor's  Manual  for  1891  there  appears  the  following 
table  showing  the  extent  to  which  steel  rails  had  superseded 
iron  rails  in  the  United  States  down  to  1890,  double  and  side 
tracks  being  included  in  the  figures  given. 


Years. 

Miles  of 
steel  rails. 

Miles  of 
iron  rails. 

Total 
miles. 

Per  cent, 
steel  of  total. 

1880  

33  680 

81  967 

115  647 

29.1 

1881  

49063 

81  473 

130,536 

37.5 

1882  *   

66691 

74  269 

140,960 

47.3 

1883  

78491 

70  692 

149  183 

52.7 

1884  

90243 

66254 

156,497 

57.6 

1885  

98  102 

62495 

160,597 

61.0 

1886  

105  724 

62  324 

168,048 

62.9 

1887 

125  459 

59  588 

185  047 

67.7 

1888 

138  516 

52  981 

191  497 

72.3 

1889 

151  723 

50  513 

202  236 

75.0 

1890 

167  606 

40  697 

208  303 

80.4 

It  will  be  noticed  that,  in  the  decade  covered  by  the  table, 
while  the  iron-rail  mileage  has  decreased  one-half  the  steel- 
rail  mileage  has  increased  fivefold,  until  at  the  present  time 
80  per  cent,  of  our  railroad  tracks  are  laid  with  steel  rails. 

Henry  Thomas  Weld  was  in  1844  the  managing  agent 
and  director  for  the  English  stockholders  in  the  Mount 
Savage  company.  He  was  born  at  London  on  January  31, 
1816,  and  was  living  at  Mount  Savage  in  September,  1891. 


442  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

CHAPTER   XLIX. 
IRON  SHIPBUILDING  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

IN  his  admirable  paper  on  the  shipbuilding  industry  of 
the  United  States,  to  be  found  in  the  8th  volume  of  the  re- 
ports of  the  census  of  1880,  Henry  Hall  says  that  in  1825 
a  small  iron  steamer,  named  the  Codorus,  was  launched  in 
Pennsylvania  for  service  on  the  Susquehanna  river,  but  he 
adds  that  this  vessel  may  have  been  "  one  of  several  which 
were  exported  from  England  in  pieces  to  America  and  put 
together  here  during  that  early  period."  Ten  years  later,  in 
1835,  Mr.  Hall  says  that  "  there  were  five  iron  steamers  al- 
ready on  the  Savannah  river,  which  appear  to  have  been 
built  in  the  North."  He  also  says  that  in  1836  an  iron 
steam  vessel  was  built  at  New  York  which  engaged  in  the 
mail  service  to  New  Orleans.  The  iron  vessels  mentioned 
by  Mr.  Hall  are  the  first  in  this  country  of  which  any  rec- 
ord appears  to  have  been  preserved,  and  unfortunately  the 
information  which  has  been  accessible  to  him  is  not  complete. 

In  1839  the  first  iron  steamboat  built  for  service  on  our 
western  rivers  was  built  at  Pittsburgh  and  called  the  Valley 
Forge.  She  was  launched  on  September  9,  1839.  It  was  said 
when  the  Valley  Forge  was  built  that  she  was  the  first  iron 
vessel  "of  any  considerable  size"  that  had  been  built  in  the 
country.  The  dimensions  of  the  Valley  Forge  were  as  fol- 
lows :  Length  on  deck,  160  .feet ;  length  of  keel,  140  feet ; 
breadth  of  beam,  25  feet  4  inches ;  depth  of  hold,  6  feet. 
For  general  navigation  purposes  the  Valley  Forge  was  com- 
pletely successful.  Other  iron  vessels  were  afterwards  built 
at  Pittsburgh  which  fully  realized  the  hopes  of  their  build- 
ers, among  them  an  iron  schooner  for  ocean  service  and  an 
iron  steamer,  the  Michigan,  for  service  on  the  lakes — both 
built  by  order  of  the  General  Government  about  1842.  The 
Michigan  was  very  recently  in  active  service  on  the  lakes  as 
a  revenue  cutter.  She  was  taken  to  Erie  in  sections  on  boats 
that  were  towed  from  the  Ohio  river  through  the  Beaver  Ca- 
nal, and  was  put  together  at  Erie.  She  wras  built  of  Sligo  iron. 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES.  443 

Mr.  Hall  says  that  in  1841  Jabez  Coney  built  for  the 
Government  an  iron  revenue  cutter,  the  Saranac,  at  Boston. 
Another  authority  says  that  Mr.  Coney  built  the  revenue 
cutter  McLaine  at  Boston  about  1842.  Mr.  Hall  also  says  that 
"  as  early  as  1842  Philadelphia  had  produced  a  line  of  small 
iron  steamboats  to  trade  to  Hartford,  Connecticut." 

In  1842  Captain  John  Ericsson,  of  New  York,  furnished 
designs  for  four  freight  propeller  iron  steamers  which  were 
built  for  the  Delaware  and  Raritan  Canal,  each  96  feet  long, 
24  feet  beam,  and  7  feet  deep.  In  1843  there  was  also  built 
after  his  designs  the  propeller  iron  steamer  Legare,  for  the 
Government  revenue  service,  150  feet  long,  26  feet  beam,  and 
10  feet  deep,  and  four  iron  propeller  boats  for  the  Erie  Canal, 
each  80  feet  long,  14  feet  beam,  and  6  feet  deep.  In  the  same 
year  Captain  Ericsson  built  two  steam  passenger  boats  of  iron 
to  run  on  the  James  River  Canal,  in  Virginia,  and  about  the 
same  time  other  small  iron  vessels  were  built  after  his  de- 
signs. In  1846  an  iron  passenger  steamer,  the  Iron  Witch, 
220  feet  long,  27  feet  beam,  and  13  feet  deep,  was  built  at  ' 
New  York,  after  designs  furnished  by  Captain  Ericsson,  to 
run  on  the  Hudson  river  to  Albany.  In  1845  R.  B.  Forbes, 
of  Boston,  built  a  powerful  iron  wrecking  vessel  of  JOQ-ians' } 
burden,  which  was  named  after  himself.  Other  iron  vessels 
were  subsequently  built  at  Boston  and  elsewhere.  The  build- 
ing of  iron  vessels  in  this  country  made  but  slow  progress, 
however,  until  after  1860,  when  the  civil  war  created  a  de- 
mand for  iron  and  ironclad  war  vessels,  one  of  the  first  to  be 
built  being  the  celebrated  Monitor. 

Until  recently  the  business  of  iron  shipbuilding  has  not 
nourished  in  this  country  like  other  leading  branches  of 
American  industry,  but  it  has  in  the  last  few  years  attained 
to  very  respectable  proportions,  the  building  of  a  new  Amer- 
ican navy  having  given  it  a  great  impetus.  In  1868  only 
five  iron  steamships  were  built  for  ocean  service.  Since  that 
year  over  600  iron  and  steel  vessels  have  been  built,  chiefly 
at  shipyards  on  the  Delaware,  not  including  naval  vessels. 

The  first  Transatlantic  iron  steamships  to  attract  atten- 
tion which  were  built  in  this  country  were  the  four  vessels 
of  the  American  Steamship  Company's  line,  the  Pennsylvania, 
Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Illinois,  built  of  Pennsylvania  iron  at  Phil- 


444  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

adelphia  in  1871, 1872,  and  1873  by  W.  Cramp  &  Sons,  and 
still  running  regularly  between  that  port  and  European  ports. 
Their  tonnage  capacity  was  originally  3,100  tons  each.  Most 
of  the  European  visitors  to  the  Centennial  Exhibition  came 
to  Philadelphia  and  returned  to  their  homes  in  the  vessels  of 
this  line.  In  1874  John  Roach  &  Son  built  at  Chester,  Penn- 
sylvania, for  the  Pacific  Mail  Steamship  Company,  two  iron 
steamships  of  large  size  and  superior  equipment,  which  fully 
equaled  in  all  respects  the  best  British-built  iron  steamers. 
These  were  the  City  of  Peking  and  the  City  of  Tokio,  twin 
vessels  in  every  respect.  Their  registered  tonnage  was  5,000 
tons  each. 

From  a  paper  by  Rev.  Dr.  Francis  B.  Wheeler,  in  which 
he  acknowledges  his  indebtedness  for  valuable  information 
to  a  paper  by  E.  P.  Dorr,  which  was  read  before  the  Buf- 
falo Historical  Society  on  the  3d  of  January,  1874,  and  from 
a  statement  prepared  by  Captain  Ericsson  we  compile  the 
following  account  of  the  building  of  the  famous  Monitor. 
This  account  we  have  submitted  to  the  Hon.  John  F.  Wins- 
low,  of  Poughkeepsie,  New  York,  one  of  the  builders  of  the 
vessel,  who  pronounces  it  to  be  correct  in  every  particular. 

The  invention  of  the  Monitor  belongs  to  Captain  John  Ericsson,  of  New 
York  city,  but  its  creation  is  due  to  two  distinguished  ironmasters  of  the 
State  of  New  York,  namely,  the  Hon.  John  F.  Winslow  and  his  partner  in 
business,  the  Hon.  John  A.  Griswold.  They  were  not  shipbuilders,  had  no 
special  facilities  for  constructing  vessels,  and  knew  nothing  by  experience 
of  the  business,  and  there  had  never  been  any  iron  war  ships  built  in  this 
country ;  hence  for  them  to  attempt  to  put  afloat  any  kind  of  a  war  vessel 
was  a  hazardous  experiment.  The  Monitor  in  all  its  parts  was  designed  by 
Mr.  Ericsson — hull,  turret,  steam  machinery,  anchor-hoister,  gun-carriages, 
etc. ;  all  were  built  from  working  drawings  made  by  his  own  hands,  furnish- 
ing the  rare  instance  of  such  a  structure  in  all  its  details  emanating  from  a 
single  person.  But  the  Monitor  would  not  have  been  built  if  Messrs.  Wins- 
low  &  Griswold,  who  were  iron  manufacturers  and  men  of  the  highest  pa- 
triotism, had  not  pressed  upon  the  Government  the  adoption  of  the  invent- 
or's daring  scheme  and  afterwards  furnished  the  means  to  secure  the  con- 
struction of  the  vessel. 

Mr.  Winslow  carefully  examined  the  plans  prepared  by  Captain  Ericsson 
for  the  construction  of  the  Monitor — plans  which  had  found  no  favor  with 
the  special  naval  board  appointed  in  1861,  in  accordance  with  an  act  of  Con- 
gress, to  examine  and  report  upon  the  subject  of  iron-clad  shipbuilding. 
Mr.  Winslow  became  satisfied  that  Captain  Ericsson's  plans  were  both  fea- 
sible and  desirable.  After  conferring  with  his  partner,  Mr.  Griswold,  it  was 
determined  to  lay  the  whole  matter  before  President  Lincoln.  This  was 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  445 

done  in  October,  1861.  The  earnestness  with  which  Mr.  Winslow  and  Mr. 
(iiiswold  pressed  the  subject  upon  the  attention  of  the  President  secured 
from  him  the  promise  that  he  would  meet  them  on  the  next  day  at  the 
olliro  of  Commodore  Smith,  a  member  of  the  board  already  referred  to,  and 
talk  the  subject  over.  The  meeting  took  place.  There  were  present  Mr. 
Lincoln,  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  (Mr.  Welles,)  Commodore  Smith,  and 
other  officials  of  the  Navy  Department.  Mr.  Winslow  again  presented  the 
merits  of  Captain  Ericsson's  plans  for  the  construction  of  the  Monitor.  The 
President  expressed  his  wish  that  the  subject  should  be  still  further  investi- 
gated by  Commodore  Smith,  and  then  withdrew.  The  interview  resulted 
in  a  contract  with  Captain  Ericsson  and  Messrs.  Winslow  &  Griswold  for  the 
construction  of  the  Monitor,  the  vessel  to  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  Gov- 
ernment within  100  days,  at  a  cost  of  $275,000.  Mr.  C.  8.  Bushnell,  the 
business  associate  of  Captain  Ericsson,  also  signed  the  contract.  The  con- 
tract was  burdened  with  many  exacting  conditions  and  restrictions,  which 
amounted  to  almost  a  prohibition  of  the  enterprise.  The  contractors,  how- 
ever, at  once  entered  upon  their  important  undertaking.  Winslow  &  Grw- 
wold  took  all  the  riskx  of  loxx  if  tlw  enterprise  should  prove  to  be  a  failure. 

The  hull  of  the  vessel  was  built  by  Thomas  F.  Rowland,  agent  of  the 
Continental  iron  works,  at  Green  Point,  Long  Island,  the  plates,  burs,  and 
rivets  being  largely  supplied  to  him  by  the  Albany  iron  works  of  Winslow 
&  Griswold.  The  Delarnater  iron  works,  of  New  York,  were  commissioned 
to  manufacture  the  steam  machinery,  propellers,  and  internal  apparatus  of 
the  turret.  The  Novelty  iron  works,  of  New  York,  built  the  turret,  and  the 
turret-plating  and  a  part  of  the  armor-plating,  composed  of  a  series  of  plates 
one  inch  thick,  were  rolled  by  H.  Abbott  &  Son,  of  Baltimore.  The  port 
stoppers  were  assigned  to  Charles  D.  DeLancy,  of  Buffalo.  The  work  was 
pushed  with  all  diligence  until  the  30th  of  January,  1862,  when  the  ship  was 
launched  at  Green  Point,  101  days  from  the  execution  of  the  contract.  Dur- 
ing its  construction  Captain  Ericsson  gave  his  personal  attention  to  all  the 
details,  and  the  launching  of  the  vessel  in  the  remarkably  brief  period  of 
101  days  from  the  signing  of  the  contract  was  in  large  part  the  result  of  his 
untiring  energy  and  devotion. 

The  first  trial  trip  of  the  Monitor  was  on  February  19,  1862,  and  on  that 
day  she  was  delivered  to  the  navy  yard  for  her  armament  and  stores.  She 
made  two  trial  trips  afterwards.  The  first  and  second  trips  were  not  satis- 
factory, the  first  because  the  cut-off  valve  had  been  improperly  set  and 
would  not  admit  the  steam  properly  to  the  cylinders ;  the  second  from  some 
sliirlit  defect  in  the  steering  apparatus,  which  was  speedily  corrected. 

On  January  13,  1862,  Lieutenant  Worden,  afterwards  rear-admiral,  was 
ordered  to  the  command  of  the  Monitor,  then  on  the  stocks.  On  the  20th  of 
February,  1862,  he  received  sailing-orders  from  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy  to 
proceed  to  Hampton  Roads,  Virginia,  and  there  report  to  the  Navy  Depart- 
ment. On  the  afternoon  of  the  6th  of  March,  18(52,  the  Monitor,  with  a  pick- 
rd  crew  from  the  war  ships  North  Carolina  and  Sabinc,  fifty-eight  officers  and 
men  all  told,  left  the  lower  bay  of  New  York,  with  a  moderate  wind  and 
smooth  sea,  in  tow  of  a  small  tug,  the  Scth  Low,  and  accompanied  by  the 
United  States  steamers  Currilnck  and  Sachem.  After  encountering  a  severe 
Rtorni  the  .Monitor  passed  Cape  Henry  light-house  at  four  o'clock  on  the  af- 
ternoon of  March  8th.  At  this  point  heavy  firing  in  the  direction  of  For- 


446  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

tress  Monroe  indicated  an  engagement,  and  very  soon  Lieutenant  Worden 
learned  from  a  pilot  of  the  advent  of  the  Merrimac  and  the  disaster  to  the 
ships  Cumberland  and  Congress.  On  the  information  received  from  the  pilot 
Lieutenant  Worden  ordered  the  Monitor  to  be  prepared  for  action,  and  at 
nine  o'clock  that  evening  anchored  at  Hampton  Roads  near  the  frigate  Roa- 
noke,  to  the  commander  of  which  Lieutenant  Worden  reported. 

The  next  morning,  March  9,  1862,  the  Merrimac  was  observed  under 
way,  steaming  slowly  from  SewelPs  Point,  where  she  had  anchored  during 
the  night,  to  accomplish  more  perfectly  her  work  of  the  day  before.  The 
Monitor  immediately  stood  for  her  with  crew  at  quarters,  and  the  fierce  and 
remarkable  fight  began,  continuing  from  eight  o'clock  A.  M.  to  one  and  a  half 
o'clock  P.  M.,  and  resulting  in  the  discomfiture  of  the  Merrimac  and  the  full 
proof  of  all  that  had  been  claimed  for  the  Monitor. 

Orders  for  more  monitors  were  at  once  given,  and  Captain  Ericsson  and 
the  firm  of  Winslow  &  Griswold  had  the  confidence  and  gratitude  of  the 
whole  American  people.  The  great  regret  was  everywhere  expressed  that 
the  Monitor  was  not  at  Hampton  Roads  one  day  sooner  to  save  the  Cumber- 
land and  the  Congress  with  the  brave  men  who  went  down  with  them. 

The  life  of  the  Monitor  was  as  short  as  it  was  eventful.  From  the  10th 
of  March  until  the  destruction  of  the  Merrimac  on  the  llth  of  May,  1862, 
she  lay  in  Hampton  Roads  as  a  guard  for  the  vast  interests  centred  there. 
On  the  12th  of  May  she  led  the  vessels  which  went  to  Norfolk  on  the  evac- 
uation of  that  city  by  the  Confederates,  and  subsequently  performed  other 
services  on  the  James  river.  In  September  sh,e  was  at  the  Washington  navy 
yard  for  repairs,  sailing  again  for  Hampton  Roads  in  November.  On  the 
29th  of  December,  1862,  she  sailed  for  Beaufort,  North  Carolina,  in  company 
with  the  steamer  Rhode  Island,  her  convoy,  and  on  the  night  of  the  30th  she 
foundered  near  Cape  Hatteras,  carrying  down  about  one-half  of  her  officers 
and  crew. 

The  revolving  turret  of  the  Monitor  and  its  successors  of 
the  same  type  was  not  the  invention  of  Captain  Ericsson 
but  of  Theodore  R.  Timby,  who  explains  its  history  as  fol- 
lows in  published  letters  dated  March  7,  1888. 

The  first  sight  of  the  circular  form  of  "  Castle  William,"  on  Govern- 
or's Island,  in  the  harbor  of  New  York,  suggested  to  me  the  idea  of  a  re- 
volving plan  for  defensive  works,  and  in  April,  1841,  (when  I  was  but  nine- 
teen years  of  age,)  I  came  to  Washington  and  exhibited  a  model  and  plans 
of  a  revolving  battery,  to  be  made  of  iron,  to  the  then  chief  of  engineers 
and  the  chief  of  ordnance,  U.  S.  Army.  I  also  submitted  this  model  and 
these  plans  to  the  Hon.  John  C.  Calhoun  and  many  of  his  distinguished 
friends.  In  January,  1843, 1  made  a  model  of  a  marine  turret,  which  model 
is  now  in  my  possession.  At  this  date  I  made  my  first  record  in  the  Uni- 
ted States  Patent  Office,  and  from  January,  1841,  to  1861  I  continued  to 
urge  the  importance  of  my  plans  upon  the  proper  authorities  at  Washing- 
ton and  elsewhere.  In  1856  I  exhibited  the  plans  to  the  Emperor  Napo- 
leon III.,  and  received  some  encouragement,  but  without  practical  results. 
In  1862  I  entered  into  a  written  agreement  with  the  contractors  and  build- 
ers of  the  original  Monitor,  (John  F.  Winslow  and  John  A.  Griswold,  of 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES. 


447 


Troy,  New  York,  C.  S.  Bushnell,  of  New  Haven,  Connecticut,  and  their  as- 
sociates,) for  the  use  of  my  patents  covering  the  revolving  turret,  by  which 
they  agreed  to  pay  me,  and  did  pay  me,  $5,000  as  a  royalty  on  each  turret 

constructed  by  them 

It  is  in  no  degree  probable  that  the  Monitor  or  anything  like  it  would 
ever  have  been  built  had  it  not  been  for  the  liberality,  patriotism,  and  per- 
sistence of  Hon.  John  F.  Winslow  and  John  A.  Griswold. 

The  following  table  gives  the.  number  and  gross  tonnage 
of  all  iron  and  steel  vessels,  except  those  for  the  navy,  which 
have  been  built  in  the  United  States  in  the  fiscal  years  from 
1868  to  1891.  Nearly  all  were  steam  vessels.  Since  1883  we 
have  built  many  vessels  of  steel,  and  the  tendency  now  is 
to  use  steel  in  constantly  increasing  quantities  in  the  con- 
struction of  both  merchant  and  naval  vessels.  This  table 
has  been  compiled  from  the  reports  of  the  Bureau  of  Navi- 
gation of  the  Treasury  Department. 


Years. 

No. 

Tons. 

Years. 

No. 

Tons. 

Years. 

No. 

Tons. 

1868 

2,801 

1876   .    ... 

^ 

21  346 

1884 

34 

35  631 

1869 

4,584 

1877  

7 

5,927 

1885 

48 

440^8 

1870 

8,281 

1878  

32 

26  960 

1886  ..     .. 

26 

14  908 

1871 

15,479 

1879  

24 

22008 

1887.  .   .  . 

29 

34  354 

1872 

20 

12,766 

1880  

31 

25  582 

1888  . 

43 

36719 

1873  

26 

26,548 

1881  

42 

28392 

1889  

48 

53  513 

1874  

23 

33,097 

1882  

43 

40  097 

1890   .  .  . 

63 

80  378 

1875           

20 

21,632 

1883  

35 

39  646 

1891.... 

76 

105,618 

John  Ericsson,  distinguished  on  two  continents  as  an  en- 
gineer, was  born  in  the  province  of  Wermland,  Sweden,  on 
July  31, 1803,  and  died  in  New  York  city  on  March  8, 1889, 
aged  over  85  years.  In  1890  his  remains  were  taken  to  Swe- 
den in  a  United  States  naval  vessel. 

Mr.  Winslow  is  now  living  in  retirement  at  Poughkeepsie, 
New  York,  and  was  in  good  health  late  in  1891.  He  was 
born  at  Bennington,  Vermont,  on  November  5,  1810. 


448  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

CHAPTER  L. 
THE    HISTORY   OF  CUT  AND  WIRE  NAILS. 

IN  one  of  our  chapters  devoted  to  the  early  iron  history 
of  New  England  and  in  our  New  York  chapter  we  have  re- 
ferred to  the  invention  in  the  closing  years  of  the  last  cent- 
ury of  machines  for  cutting  nails  and  have  claimed  for  this 
invention  an  American  origin.  We  now  supplement  these 
statements  with  some  additional  information  concerning  the 
manufacture  of  both  steel  and  iron  cut  nails  and  also  con- 
cerning the  manufacture  of  wire  nails. 

Knight,  in  his  Mechanical  Dictionary,  thus  briefly  summa- 
rizes the  leading  facts  connected  with  the  invention  of  cut 
nails,  some  of  which,  derived  from  other  sources,  we  have 
already  presented  in  preceding  chapters. 

Cut  nails  were  first  made  in  this  country.  About  1775  Jeremiah  Wil- 
kinson, of  Cumberland,  Ehode  Island,  cut  tacks  from  plates  of  sheet  metal, 
and  afterward  made  nails  and  spikes  in  a  similar  manner,  forming  the 
heads  in  a  vise.  Ezekiel  Reed,  of  Bridge  water,  Massachusetts,  in  1786  in- 
vented a  machine  for  cutting  nails  from  the  plate,  and  in  1798  obtained  a 
patent  for  cutting  and  heading  them  at  one  operation.  Benjamin  Cochran 
had  also  constructed  a  machine  of  this  kind;  and  Josiah  Pierson,  of  New 
York,  in  1794  patented  a  machine  for  cutting  nails  from  the  sheet.  Per- 
kins's machine,  invented  in  1790  and  patented  in  1795,  is  said  to  have  been 
capable  of  making  200,000  nails  per  day.  These  and  Odiorne's,  which  em- 
braced some  improvements  upon  them,  attracted  great  attention  in  England, 
where  they  soon  came  into  extensive  use.  At  the  close  of  the  century  twen- 
ty-three patents  had  been  granted  for  improvements  in  nail  machines. 

In  1879  Mr.  Shubal  Wilder,  of  New  Castle,  Pennsylvania, 
then  an  old  man,  who  had  been  employed  as  a  nail-cutter' 
from  his  boyhood,  first  at  Wareham,  Massachusetts,  in  1826, 
and  afterwards  in  Pennsylvania,  published  the  following 
opinion  of  several  nail-cutting  and  nail-heading  machines 
which  had  been  in  use  during  his  day. 

From  1825  to  1835  there  was  a  great  increase  in  the  number  of  nail 
machines  and  factories  in  New  England,  New  York,  and  through  New  Jer- 
sey and  Eastern  Pennsylvania;  consequently  there  was  a  great  demand 
for  men  to  run  nail  machines.  Almost  all  the  time  men  kept  coming  to 
Massachusetts  from  New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania  on  the  hunt  for  nailers, 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  449 

and  this  is  the  reason  why  so  many  New  England  people  or  their  descend- 
ants are  found  in  nearly  every  town  where  there  are  iron  works  and  nail 
factories.  The  Reed  nail  machine,  now  in  use,  is  the  only  one  among  the 
many  that  have  been  patented  that  has  succeeded.  The  Perkins  machine, 
invented  by  Jacob  Perkins,  of  Massachusetts,  made  a  very  good  nail,  but  it 
was  very  expensive  to  keep  in  order.  The  Odiorne  machine  also  made 
a  good  nail,  but  was  attended  with  the  same  difficulty  as  the  Perkins. 
There  were  several  other  side  shear  machines  built,  but  they  never  came 
into  use.  The  improvements  made  by  Melville  Otis  on  the  Reed  machine 
have  brought  it  to  a  high  state  of  perfection  :  the  only  thing  now  remain- 
ing to  be  done  is  the  introduction  of  a  reliable  self-feeder,  which  if  not 
already  invented  will  be  an  accomplishment  of  the  near  future. 

Since  Mr.  Wilder  wrote  these  words  the  wire  nail  has 
largely  supplanted  the  cut  nail,  and  his  own  town  of  New 
Castle  has  become  very  prominent  in  its  manufacture. 

The  primitive  nail-cutting  machines  which  were  used 
about  the  beginning  of  the  present  century  and  for  some 
years  afterwards  are  doubtless  correctly  described  in  the 
following  extract  from  the  History  of  Indiana  County,  Penn- 
sylvania, reference  being  made  to  a  machine  used  in  1818 
by  a  blacksmith  in  the  town  of  Indiana,  who  is  said  to  have 
manufactured  all  the  cut  nails  that  were  used  in  Indiana 
county  and  adjoining  counties. 

The  machine  used  was  propelled  by  one  person  using  the  right  hand 
on  one  lever  and  the  right  foot  on  another  lever.  The  left  hand  was  occu- 
pied in  manipulating  the  iron  from  which  the  nails  were  cut.  The  iron  was 
called  "  nail  iron,"  and  was  of  different  widths,  according  to  the  requisite 
sizes  desired,  such  as  shingle,  clapboard,  brads,  lathing,  etc.  Two-inch 
shingle  nails  were  sold  for  37  £  cents  per  pound ;  clapboard  do.,  25  cents  ; 
brads,  18  cents  ;  lathing,  31  cents,  etc.  Before  cutting,  the  iron  was  brought 
to  a  red  heat  in  the  common  blacksmith  fire.  After  the  nails  were  cooled 
they  were  taken  to  a  place  to  be  headed.  This  was  done  with  a  spring  vice, 
which  was  closed  by  the  pressure  of  the  right  foot.  Only  one  nail  was  in- 
serted at  a  time.  One  stroke  of  the  hammer  on  the  nail  made  a  brad  ;  two 
more  made  a  clapboard  or  weather-boarding  nail.  The  iron  was  procured 
at  the  different  rolling  mills  in  Huntingdon  county,  and  hauled  in  wagons 
to  Indiana  county. 

These  nails  were  cut  from  plate  iron,  w7hich  was  rolled  in 
the  small  rolling  mills  of  the  day  and  before  the  time  when 
bar  iron  was  rolled.  To  these  small  rolling  mills  were  some- 
times added  slitters  for  slitting  the  flat  strips  of  iron  into 
nail-rods,  which  were  converted  into  so-called  wrought  nails 
exclusively  by  hand,  as  has  been  elsewhere  explained.  The 
iron  to  be  used  in  the  early  nail- cutting  machines  was  first 


450  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

hammered  to  the  thickness  of  about  half  an  inch  and  then 
rolled  to  the  width  and  thickness  required  by  the  sizes  of 
the  nails  to  be  cut. 

In  Knight's  Mechanical  Dictionary,  published  as  late  as 
1877,  the  wire  nail  is  thus  referred  to  :  "  Chests  and  boxes 
from  the  Continent  of  Europe  and  from  Asia  are  found  to  be 
fastened  with  nails  of  this  character."  Knight  neither  gives 
the  origin  of  the  wire  nail  nor  describes  any  of  the  machines 
by  which  it  is  made.  Since  the  publication  of  his  Dictionary 
.  the  wire  nail  has  become  a  leading  product  of  American  skill. 

The  first  wire  nails  manufactured  in  the  United  States 
were  made  in  1851  or  1852  at  New  York  by  William  Has- 
sall.  Six  of  the  machines  at  first  used  by  Mr.  Hassall  are 
still  in  use  in  the  wire-nail  factory  of  his  son,  John  Hassall, 
in  Brooklyn.  Previous  to  the  introduction  of  wire  made  of 
/  Bessemer  steel  all  the  wire  nails  made  by  William  Hassall 
were  made  from  iron  or  brass  wire.  The  wire  nails  made 
by  William  Hassall  were  of  small  sizes,  escutcheon  and  up- 
holsterer's nails  being  specialties.  William  Hassall  was  born 
at  Birmingham,  England,  in  1817,  emigrated  to  New  York 
city  in  1850,  and  died  there  in  1888,  aged  71  years. 

The  wire  nail  as  a  substitute  for  the  cut  nail  did  not, 
however,  come  into  notice  in  this  country  until  a  very  few 
years  ago,  in  1883  or  1884.  Mr.  E.  J.  Buffington,  treasurer 
of  the  American  Wire  Nail  Company,  whose  works  are  now 
located  at  Anderson,  Indiana,  sends  us  the  following  interest- 
ing account  of  the  organization  of  his  company,  which  was 
the  first  company  to  give  the  wire  nail  a  start  in  American 
markets  as  a  competitor  of  the  cut  nail. 

The  origin  of  the  present  American  Wire  Nail  Company  dates  back  as 
far  as  1871,  when  a  few  German  residents  of  Covington,  Kentucky,  contrib- 
uted to  a  fund  for  importing  three  German  machines.  These  three  ma- 
chines made  nothing  larger  than  a  3d  fine  nail,  and  were  kept  busy  prin- 
cipally on  cigar-box  nails  and  small  wire  brads.  For  several  years  the  pro- 
moters of  this  new  industry  met  with  no  success.  However  they  were  not 
discouraged  from  adding  to  their  then  surplus  capacity.  The  American 
Wire  and  Screw  Nail  Company,  which  was  the  predecessor  of  our  present 
company,  was  organized  in  1875,  and  its  management  passed  into  the  hands 
of  men  with  enthusiastic  views  as  to  the  future  of  wire  nails  in  this  country. 
The  trade  in  cigar-box  nails  had  grown  to  be  of  considerable  importance  to 
them,  and  the  plant  was  increased  to  twenty  machines.  Very  great  difficul- 
ty was  experienced  in  inducing  the  hardware  trade  to  recognize  the  wire 


IRON    IN   ALL    AGES. 


451 


brad  and  wire  nail  as  a  salable  commodity.  From  1878  to  1880  the  growth 
of  the  wire  nail  was  very  slow  and  was  attended  with  many  difficulties. 
Deep-rooted  prejudices  of  all  kinds  had  to  be  overcome.  It  was  not  until 
the  year  1883  or  1884  that  the  wire  nail  came  into  the  market  prominently 
as  a  competitor  of  the  cut  nail,  and  it  was  at  this  time  that  the  standard 
wire  nail  was  instituted.  Each  successive  year  after  this  the  demand  for 
wire  nails  increased  phenomenally,  and,  in  fact,  passed  beyond  the  wildest 
hopes  of  the  most  sanguine. 

Down  to  1883  all  the  cut  nails  manufactured  in  this 
country  in  commercial  quantities  were  made  of  iron,  but  in 
that  year  cut  nails  made  of  Bessemer  steel  and  others  made 
of  combined  iron  and  steel  were  sold  in  American  markets. 

The  production  of  iron  and  steel  cut  nails  in  the  Unit- 
ed States,  not  including  wire  nails,  has  been  as  follows  from 
1873  to  1890,  in  kegs  of  100  pounds. 


Years. 

Kegs! 

Years. 

Kegs. 

Years. 

Kegs. 

1873  

4,024,704 

1879  

5,011,021 

1885  

6  696  815 

1874  

4,912,180 

1880  

5,370,512 

1886  

8  160  973 

1875 

4  726  881 

1881 

5  794  206 

1887 

6  908  870 

1876 

4  157  814 

1882 

6  147  097 

1888 

6  493  591 

1877    

4,828,918 

1883  

7,762,737 

1889  

5,810,758 

1878 

4  396  130 

1884 

7  581  379 

1890 

5  640  946 

In  1884  the  production  of  steel  cut  nails  in  the  United 
States,  including  500  kegs  of  combined  iron  and  steel  nails, 
was  393,482  kegs,  or  5  per  cent,  of  the  total  cut-nail  pro- 
duction. Down  to  and  including  1890  the  maximum  total 
production  of  cut  nails  was  reached  in  1886,  with  8,160,973 
kegs,  and  the  maximum  production  of  steel  cut  nails  alone 
was  reached  in  1888,  with  4,323,484  kegs.  In  1889  and  1890 
over  two-thirds  of  the  total  production  of  cut  nails  was  made 
of  steel.  The  quantity  of  combined  iron  and  steel  nails 
made  in  1890  was  about  111,000  kegs. 

In  1886  the  production  of  wire  nails  was  estimated  to 
have  amounted  to  600,000  kegs  of  100  pounds,  made  by  27 
wire  nail  works  ;  in  1887  the  production  was  estimated  to 
have  been  1,250,000  kegs,  made  by  47  works ;  in  1888  it  was 
estimated  to  have  been  1,500,000  kegs;  in  1889  it  was  esti- 
mated to  have  been  2,435,000  kegs.  The  actual  production 
in  1890  was  3,135,911  kegs,  nearly  all  the  nails  being  made 
of  steel.  The  wire  nails  made  in  1890  were  produced  by  47 
works. 


452  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER  LI. 

IMPKOVEMENTS    IN   AMERICAN    BLAST   FURNACE 
PRACTICE. 

IN  our  Maryland  and  Virginia  chapters  extracts  are  given 
from  letters  written  by  members  of  the  Principio  Company, 
which  built  Principio  furnace  and  forge  in  Maryland,  and 
afterwards,  in  connection  with  Augustine  Washington,  built 
Accokeek  furnace  in  Virginia.  We  now  make  some  additional 
extracts  from  one  of  these  letters,  written  by  John  Wightwick 
to  John  England,  and  dated  at  London  on  October  2,  1730, 
which  we  give  to  show  the  technical  ideas  which  prevailed 
in  those  days  in  England  and  America  concerning  the  man- 
ufacture of  pig  iron.  Referring  to  letters  from  Nathaniel 
Chapman,  the  clerk  at  Accokeek  furnace,  Mr.  Wightwick  says  : 

He  says  he  thinks  it  will  be  cheaper  to  send  hearths  from  England 
than  to  bring  the  stones  20  miles  land  carriage  from  a  quarry  (where  he 
says  there  are  good  ones)  at  that  distance  from  the  works,  but  I  hope  you 
will  consider  that  point  thoroughly,  because  sending  hearths  from  hence 
is  very  chargable  in  freight,  as  well  as  troublesome  to  get  them  and  put 
them  on  board.  Bellows  leather  I  suppose  you  must  always  have  from 
hence.  The  price  of  piggs  is  very  low  at  present ;  we  hope  in  a  short  time 
it  will  be  better.  The  Potomack  piggs  will  not  reach  5Z.  15s.,  they  being 
cheap  piggs  are  fittest  for  founderys,  and  I  don't  doubt  but  we  might  sell 
a  large  quantity  yearly  in  London  for  that  use.  We  have  sold  some  of 
these  last  arrived,  but  the  dealers  complain  they  are  too  white;  if  they 
were  grey  they  would  go  off  much  better. 

The  way  to  distinguish  grey  piggs  from  white  is  this:  taber  upon 
them  with  a  hammer,  and  if  they  have  a  deadish  leaden  sound  they  are 
grey ;  they  will  also  be  pretty  level  in  the  belly  of  the  pigg,  &  the  edges 
of  them  will  be  blunt.  If  they  are  white  by  hammering  on  them  they 
will  ring  much  more,  the  under  sides  of  them  will  be  hollow,  &  the  edges 
much  more  sharp,  and  if  you  strike  the  white  ones  at  the  end  they  will 
break  short.  This  information  I  had  from  a  Founder  whom  we  sold  a  parcel 
to ;  and  this  difference  is  not  so  much  owing  to  the  ore  as  the  fluxing, 
for  we  have  pretty  near  an  equal  quantity  of  grey  piggs  mixed  with  the 
white,  which  inclines  me  to  think  this  must  be  some  mismanagement  of 
the  Founder  that  they  are  not  all  grey.  I  therefore  hope  you  will  con- 
sider and  give  directions  to  the  Founder  accordingly ;  and  let  the  hearths 
at  both  works  be  always  set  burrow  and  not  transheer,  for  white 
will  do  us  great  prejudice  in  the  sales. 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  453 

Since  the  introduction  into  this  country  of  the  hot-blast 
in  connection  with  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron,  which  occur- 
red in  the  decade  between  1830  and  1840,  many  methods  of 
heating  the  blast  have  been  in  use.  The  first  practical  appli- 
cation of  the  hot-blast  in  this  country  was  made  at  Oxford 
furnace,  in  New  Jersey,  in  1834,  by  William  Henry,  the  man- 
ager. The  waste  heat  at  the  tymp  passed  over  the  surface  of 
a  nest  of  small  cast-iron  pipes,  through  which  the  blast  was 
conveyed  to  the  furnace.  The  temperature  was  raised  to  250° 
Fahrenheit,  and  the  product  of  the  furnace  was  increased 
about  10  per  cent.  In  1835  a  hot-blast  oven,  containing  cast- 
iron  arched  pipes,  was  placed  on  the  top  of  the  stack  by  Mr. 
Henry  and  heated  by  the  flame  from  the  tunnel-head.  By 
this  means  the  temperature  of  the  blast  was  raised  to  500°. 
This  innovation  in  American  blast-furnace  practice  increased 
the  product  of  Oxford  furnace  about  40  per  cent.,  with  a  sav- 
ing of  about  the  same  percentage  of  fuel.  No  better  device 
for  heating  the  blast  was  in  use  in  this  country  until  about 
1840.  Hot-blast  ovens,  supplied  with  cast-iron  arched  pipes, 
of  various  patterns,  were  in  general  use  in  subsequent  years 
down  to  about  1861,  when  an  improvement  in  the  construc- 
tion of  the  oven,  but  embodying  no  essential  modification  of 
the  system,  was  introduced  by  Samuel  Thomas  and  adopted 
at  many  furnaces.  In  1867  or  1868  John  Player,  of  England, 
introduced  his  iron  hot-blast  stove  into  the  United  States, 
which  soon  became  popular,  owing  to  the  facilities  which  it 
afforded  for  increasing  the  heat  of  the  blast.  Mr.  Player  per- 
sonally superintended  the  erection  of  the  first  of  his  stoves 
in  this  country  at  the  anthracite  furnace  of  J.  B.  Moorhead 
&  Co.,  at  West  Conshohocken,  in  Montgomery  county,  Penn- 
sylvania. A  few  years  ago  it  was  still  in  use.  Down  to  the 
introduction  of  the  Player  hot-blast  the  ovens,  or  stoves,  were 
generally  placed  at  the  tunnel-head  ;  Mr.  Player  placed  his  >. 
stove  on  the  ground. 

It  is  due  to  the  memory  of  John  Player  that  the  fact 
should  here  be  plainly  stated  that  the  introduction  of  his 
stove  was  instrumental  in  greatly  increasing  the  yield  of 
American  furnaces  and  decreasing  the  quantity  of  fuel  used  , 
to  the  ton  of  pig  iron.  After  its  introduction  the  tempera- 
ture of  the  blast  was  generally  raised,  even  where  the  Thorn- 


454  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

as  and  other  ovens  were  used,  and  before  long  powerful  blow- 
ing engines  were  more  generally  used  and  higher  furnaces 
were  built.  Connellsville  coke  was  found  to  work  admirably 
as  a  fuel  for  blast  furnaces  in  connection  with  a  powerful 
blast  and  high  temperature.  Since  1868  cast-iron  stoves  of 
various  patterns  have  been  increased  in  size,  and-  in  this 
and  other  improvements  their  efficiency  in  raising  the  tem- 
perature of  the  blast  has  been  greatly  promoted. 

The  Whitwell  fire-brick  hot-blast  stove,  also  an  English 
invention,  was  first  used  in  this  country  at  Rising  Fawn 
furnace,  in  Dade  county,  Georgia,  on  June  18,  1875.  Its 
next  application  was  at  Cedar  Point  furnace,  at  Port  Hen- 
ry, in  Essex  county,  New  York,  on  August  12,  1875.  The 
stoves  at  Cedar  Point  furnace  were,  however,  built  before 
those  at  Rising  Fawn  furnace.  The  first  application  of  this 
stove  in  Pennsylvania  was  made  as  late  as  February,  1877, 
at  Dunbar  furnace,  in  Fayette  county.  The  Rising  Fawn 
and  Dunbar  furnaces  used  coke  as  fuel,  while  Cedar  Point 
furnace  used  anthracite.  The  first  set  of  Siemens-Cowper- 
Cochrane  fire-brick  hot-blast  stoves  erected  in  this  country 
was  erected  at  one  of  the  Crown  Point  furnaces,  in  Essex 
county,  New  York,  in  1877 ;  but  the  first  set  of  these  stoves 
in  any  part  of  America  was  erected  at  Londonderry,  in  Nova 
Scotia,  by  the  Steel  Company  of  Canada  Limited,  in  1876. 
The  Siemens-Cowper-Cochrane  stove  is  also  an  English  in- 
vention. Both  it  and  the  Whitwell  stove  embody  the  regener- 
ative principle  in  storing  heat.  Other  stoves  built  upon  the 
same  principle  have  been  introduced  in  European  and  Amer- 
ican blast-furnace  practice  in  late  years.  The  introduction  of 
all  these  stoves  has  greatly  promoted  the  economic  manage- 
ment of  American  blast  furnaces  and  increased  their  yield, 
supplementing  and  in  all  respects  adding  to  the  good  work 
inaugurated  when  the  Player  stove  was  introduced. 

In  the  twenty  years  between  1840  and  1860  the  plan  of 
conveying  the  escaping  gases  from  the  top  of  the  blast  fur- 
nace to  the  boilers  and  hot-blast  ovens,  or  stoves,  gradually 
came  into  general  use  as  a  substitute  for  independent  fires 
or  for  the  use  of  the  flame  at  the  tunnel-head.  Its  introduc- 
tion was  greatly  promoted  between  1844  and  1850  by  the 
efforts  of  C.  E.  Detmold,  a  German  engineer,  then  residing 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  455 

at  New  York,  who  had  taken  out  a  patent  in  this  country 
as  the  assignee  of  Achilles  Christian  Wilhelm  von  Faber  du 
Faur,  the  superintendent  of  the  government  iron  works  at 
Wasseralfingen,  in  Wurtemberg,  Germany,  who  had  invented 
a  method  of  using  furnace  gases  in  heating  the  blast.  The 
first  practical  experiments  with  this  invention  in  utilizing 
furnace  gases  in  the  production  of  heat  were  made  in  1836 
and  1837  at  Wasseralfingen. 

David  Thomas,  of  Catasauqua,  Pennsylvania,  was  the  first 
person  in  this  country  to  fully  realize  the  value  of  power- 
ful blowing  engines  in  the  working  of  blast  furnaces.  About 
1852  he  introduced  engines  at  his  furnaces  at  Catasauqua 
which  increased  the  pressure  to  double  that  which  was  then 
customary  in  England.  The  results  were  surprising.  But 
many  years  elapsed  before  Mr.  Thomas's  example  was  gen- 
erally followed  in  this  country.  Within  the  past  few  years, 
however,  our  superior  blast-furnace  practice  has  been  mainly 
due  to  the  use  of  blowing  engines  of  great  power.  English 
ironmasters  have  only  in  late  years  commenced  to  imitate 
the  best  American  practice  in  this  respect. 

Mr.  Joseph  C.  Kent,  superintendent  of  the  blast  furnaces 
of  the  Andover  Iron  Company,  at  Phillipsburg,  New  Jersey, 
writes  us  concerning  two  noteworthy  achievements  at  one  of 
these  furnaces  many  years  ago.  These  furnaces  were  then 
known  as  the  Cooper  furnaces.  In  one  week  in  1850  there 
were  produced  by  No.  1  furnace  251-J-  tons  of  pig  iron,  and  in 
one  week  in  1858  there  were  produced  by  the  same  furnace 
319  tons  of  pig  iron.  The  fuel  used  in  both  instances  was 
anthracite  coal ;  the  engines  used  were  not  large,  being  capa- 
ble of  blowing  only  from  7,000  to  8,000  cubic  feet  of  air  per 
minute,  under  a  pressure  of  from  3  to  3j-  pounds  per  square 
inch.  The  blast  was  heated  in  ordinary  syphon  pipe  ovens 
to  500°  Fahrenheit.  The  size  of  this  furnace  was  20  feet  by 
55  feet.  The  above  products  were  respectively  the  largest  that 
had  been  anywhere  produced  down  to  the  dates  mentioned, 
but  to-day  we  have  furnaces  which  make  as  much  pig  iron 
in  a  day  as  they  made  in  a  week. 

Isabella  furnace  No.  1,  located  at  Etna,  near  Pittsburgh, 
closed  early  in  1884  a  three-years'  blast  which  produced  re- 
sults which  were  at  that  time  justly  regarded  as  remarkable 


456  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

and  were  certainly  unexampled.  Its  product  was  as  follows, 
in  tons  of  2,268  pounds.  Pig  iron  made  in  1881,  324  days, 
37,4374  tons;  in  1882,  365  days,  59,032  tons;  in  1883,  365 
days,  66,408£  tons;  in  1884,  19  days,  3,927  tons:  total  in 
three  years,  less  22  days,  166,805  tons,  or  an  average  of  1,090 
tons  per  week.  The  unexampled  good  work  of  this  furnace 
was  obtained  notwithstanding  a  serious  interruption  caused 
by  a  freshet  in  the  Allegheny  river,  and  notwithstanding 
other  drawbacks.  The  furnace  was  75  feet  high,  20  feet  in 
diameter  at  the  bosh,  and  11  feet  in  diameter  at  the  hearth, 
contained  a  14-foot  stock  line,  and  had  seven,  7-inch  tuyeres. 
It  was  equipped  with  three  Whitwell  stoves  of  the  largest 
size  and  three  engines  having  7-foot  blowing  cylinders  with 
a  4-foot  stroke. 

By  far  the  best  work  ever  done  by  a  coke  furnace  was 
accomplished  in  1889  and  1890  by  one  of  the  furnaces  con- 
nected with  the  Edgar  Thomson  steel  works  at  Braddock, 
Pennsylvania,  known  as  furnace  F,  owned  by  Carnegie  Broth- 
ers &  Co.  Limited.  For  the  following  account  of  the  great 
record  made  by  this  furnace  in  the  years  mentioned,  as  well 
as  of  the  good  work  which  it  had  previously  done,  we  are  in- 
debted to  a  paper  by  Mr.  James  Gayley,  superintendent  of 
the  Edgar  Thomson  furnaces,  which  he  read  at  the  meeting 
of  the  Iron  and  Steel  Institute  at  New  York  in  October,  1890. 

This  furnace  was  built  in  1885-6.  The  total  height  is  80  feet ;  the  di- 
ameter of  hearth,  11  feet;  the  diameter  of  bosh,  23  feet.  The  bell  is  12 
feet  in  diameter  and  the  stock  line  16  feet.  The  cubical  capacity  is  19,800 
feet.  There  are  7  tuyeres,  each  6  inches  in  diameter.  The  furnace  was  start- 
ed in  October,  1886.  The  record  for  the  next  three  months  is  as  follows. 


Months. 


Gross  tons.     ;  Pounds  of  coke  per  ton  of  iron. 


November,  1886 |          6,735  2,128 

December I          7,494  I    2,105 

January,  1887 |          8,398  1,935 

From  January  to  May,  inclusive,  the  average  monthly  output  was  8,150 
tons  on  a  coke  consumption  of  1,980  pounds.  The  volume  of  air  blown  was 
27,000  cubic  feet  per  minute,  which  was  heated  to  an  average  temperature  of 
1,200  degrees.  The  pressure  at  the  tuyeres  varied  from  9  to  10  pounds,  and 
was  generally  the  latter  figure  when  the  outputs  were  largest.  In  June  the 
furnace  was  banked  for  eight  days  on  account  of  a  scarcity  of  coke.  The 
monthly  output  from  this  time  up  to  January,  1888,  was  7,400  gross  tons, 
when  a  second  stoppage  on  account  of  labor  troubles  occurred.  The  length 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES. 


457 


of  this  stop  was  sixty-seven  days.  A  portion  of  the  upper  lining  giving 
way  in  August,  1889,  the  furnace  was  blown  out.  The  furnace  was  in  blast 
(exclusive  of  the  two  stoppages  I  have  mentioned)  two  years,  seven  months, 
and  ten  days,  and  made  in  that  time  224,795  tons  of  iron  on  an  average 
coke  consumption  of  2,317  pounds.  The  output  for  the  first  twelve  full 
months  was  88,940  tons  on  2,150  pounds  of  coke.  The  furnace  was  relined 
without  delay,  and  after  a  two  weeks'  drying  out  was  put  in  blast  on  Sep- 
tember 25, 1889,  just  seven  weeks  from  the  time  of  blowing  out.  The  con- 
struction was  the  same  in  every  particular  except  that  the  diameter  of  the 
bosh  was  reduced  to  22  feet  and  the  stock  line  to  15  feet  6  inches.  This 
change  reduced  the  cubical  capacity  to  18,200  feet.  The  same  number  and 
size  of  tuyeres  were  used.  The  volume  of  air  blown  was  25,000  cubic  feet 
per  minute,  a  reduction  of  2,000  cubic  feet  from  that  used  in  the  previous 
blast.  Beginning  with  October  the  record  of  monthly  outputs  and  coke  con- 
sumption to  June,  1890,  was  as  follows. 


Months. 

Gross  tons. 

Pounds  of  coke  per  ton  of  iron. 

October,  1889  

6,521 

2,450 

November  

9,097 

1,897 

December  

10,603 

1,756 

January,  1890  

10,536 

1,737 

February  

8,954 

1,859 

March  

9,941 

1,845 

April  

10,075 

1,847 

May 

10  035 

1  884 

The  best  output  for  any  one  week  was  2,462  tons.  The  best  output  for 
a  single  day  was  502  tons  and  240  pounds,  made  on  September  3,  1890. 
The  temperature  of  the  blast  averaged  1,100  degrees,  and  the  pressure  9J 
pounds.  The  temperature  of  the  escaping  gases  was  340  degrees. 

Counting  the  time  the  furnace  was  running  in  the  first  blast,  and  up  to 
the  end  of  May,  1890,  in  the  second  blast,  including  also  the  time  spent  in 
relining,  the  period  covered  is  three  years  and  five  months,  and  in  that  time 
this  furnace  made  an  output  of  301,205  tons,  a  record  which  is  unparalleled. 
In  the  month  of  May  this  furnace,  together  with  a  companion  furnace  of 
precisely  the  same  dimensions,  made  an'  output  of  20,192  tons  on  an  aver- 
age coke  consumption  of  1,882  pounds  per  ton  of  iron.  The  ores  used  were 
from  the  Lake  Superior  region,  and  yielded  through  the  furnace  62  per  cent, 
of  iron.  The  proportion  of  limestone  carried  was  28  per  cent,  of  the  ore 
burden.  The  silicon  in  the  iron  averaged  1.60  per  cent.,  the  iron  being  run 
into  ladles  and  sent  to  the  converting  mill  direct.  I  shall  not  undertake 
to  say  what  these  furnaces  will  accomplish  on  an  uninterrupted  blast,  but 
I  believe  the  day  is  not  far  distant  when  we  shall  be  able  to  show  a  rec- 
ord of  300,(JOO  tons  from  a  furnace  in  three  years,  and  on  a  single  lining. 
[The  product  for  the  first  two  years  is  208,050  gross  tons,  showing  that 
this  prediction  will  probably  be  fulfilled.] 

In  the  period  covered  by  the  last  decade  there  are  three  steps  in  the 
development  of  American  blast-furnace  practice  that  might  be  mentioned. 
First,  in  1880,  the  introduction  of  rapid  driving,  with  its  large  outputs  and 
high  fuel  consumption;  second,  in  1885,  the  "production  of  an  equally  large 


)P 


458  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

;/  amount  of  iron  with  a  low  fuel  consumption  by  slow  driving ;  and,  third, 
I  in  1890,  the  production  of  nearly  double  that  quantity  of  iron  on  a  low 
fuel  consumption  through  rapid  driving. 

The  best  record  ever  made  by  a  charcoal  furnace  in  this 
country  or  any  other  country  was  made  in  1890  by  a  new 
furnace  in  Wisconsin.  Mr.  M.  R.  Hunt,  the  manager  of  the 
Hinkle  charcoal  furnace,  at  Ashland,  Wisconsin,  owned  by  the 
Ashland  Iron  and  Steel  Company,  reports  that  in  the  sev- 
en days  which  ended  on  October  4th  the  furnace  produced 
1,009  gross  tons  of  pig  iron.  The  best  day's  run  yielded  150 
tons  and  the  worst  yielded  141  tons.  The  stack  of  this  fur- 
nace is  60  feet  highland  the  diameter  of  the  bosh  is  12  feet. 
Neither  scrap  nor  mill  cinder  was  used.  The  ores  came  from 
the  Gogebic  range.  The  average  consumption  of  ore  per  ton 
was  4,021  pounds ;  of  charcoal,  a  little  over  82  bushels  of  22 
pounds  to  the  bushel ;  of  limestone,  174  pounds. 

Mr.  J.  King  McLanahan  informs  us  that  in  1853  Frank  s- 
tftwn  charcoal  furnace,  in  Blair  county,  Pennsylvania,  was 
changed  to  a  coke  furnace,  the  first  in  that  county,  and  made 
No.  1  foundry  pig  iron  from  Frank stown  block  fossil  ore. 
The  furnace  buildings  were  burned  down  in  1855,  and  Mr. 
McLanahan,  the  manager,  "  banked  up  on  a  full  burden." 
After  a  delay  of  exactly  fourteen  d&ys  the  blast  was  again 
turned  on,  and  in  twelve  hours  the  furnace  was  working  as 
well  as  before  the  accident  occurred.  Mr.  McLanahan  says 
that  this  was  the  first  attempt  that  was  made  in  this  country 
to  "  bank  up  "  a  coke  furnace  for  so  long  a  time. 

Achilles  Christian  Wilhelm  von  Faber  du  Faur  was  born 
on  December  2,  1786.  He  studied  at  Freiberg  in  1808^  was 
first  assistant  superintendent  of  the  government  iron  works 
at  Koenigsbronn  in  1810,  and  afterwards  was  superintendent 
for  thirty-two  years  of  the  government  iron  works  at  Was- 
seralfingen.  He  died  on  March  22,  1855. 

Christian  Edward  Detmold  was  born  in  Hanover,  Ger- 
many, on  February  2, 1810,  and  died  at  New  York  on  July 
2,  1887,  aged  over  77  years.  He  was  a  civil  engineer,  in 
which  profession  he  became  very  prominent.  He  was  also 
engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron  in  Maryland,  the 
mining  of  coal  in  Pennsylvania,  and  the  manufacture  of 
spiegeleisen  from  zinc  residuum  in  New  Jersey. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES. 


459 


CHAPTER   LIT. 


THE  MANUFACTURE   OF  TINPLATES  IN  THE  UNITED 

STATES. 

THE  manufacture  of  tinplates  in  the  United  States  was 
undertaken  in  1873  at  Wellsville,  Ohio,  and  at  Leechburg, 
Pennsylvania.  In  1875  it  was  also  undertaken  at  Demmler, 
near  Pittsburgh.  Owing,  however,  to  the  low  duty  which  was 
imposed  on  foreign  tinplates  domestic  tinplates  ceased  in 
1878  to  be  made  at  the  three  places  mentioned,  and  no  fur- 
ther attempts  to  establish  the  tinplate  industry  in  our  country 
were  made  until  about  the  time  of  the  passage  of  the  tariff 
act  of  October  1, 1890,  in  which  the  previously  existing  duty 
on  tinplates  was  more  than  doubled.  Since  that  date  sev- 
eral works  for  the  manufacture  of  tinplates  have  been  estab- 
lished in  the  United  States,  while  the  building  of  others  has 
been  commenced,  and  the  prospects  for  the  complete  success 
of  this  new  industry  are  now  most  favorable. 

The  following  table,  compiled  from  the  publications  of 
the  Bureau  of  Statistics  of  the  Treasury  Department,  shows 
the  quantities  of  tinplates  imported  into  the  United  States 
in  each  year  from  1871  to  1890,  with  their  foreign  values. 


Years. 

Gross  tons. 

Values. 

Years. 

Gross  tons. 

Values. 

1871 

82  969 

$9  946  873 

1881 

183  005 

$14  886  907 

1872 

85  629 

13  893  450 

1882 

213  987 

17,975,161 

1873 

97  177 

14  240  868 

1883 

221  233 

18,156,773 

1874 

79  778 

13  057  658 

1884 

216  181 

16,858,650 

1875  .  .  . 

91  054 

12  098  885 

1885    

228,596 

15,991,152 

1876  .... 

89  946 

9  416  816 

1886  

257,822 

17,504,976 

1877  

112,479 

10  679  028 

1887  

283,836 

18,699,145 

1878  

107  864 

9069967 

1888  

298,238 

19,762,%! 

1879  

154  250 

13,227  659 

1889  

331,311 

21,726,707 

1880 

158  049 

16  478  110 

1890 

329  346 

23  670,158 

The  total  quantity  of  tinplates  imported  into  this  country 
in  these  twenty  years  was  3,622,750  gross  tons,  and  the  total 
foreign  value  of  these  importations  was  $307,341,404.  In 
addition  to  this  sum  American  consumers  paid  freights  and 
duties  and  importers'  profits. 


460  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER   LIIL 

MISCELLANEOUS   FACTS   RELATING   TO    THE    AMERI- 
CAN   IRON  AND   STEEL  INDUSTRIES. 

IT  would  far  transcend  the  limits  assigned  to  this  work 
if  all  the  modern  inventions  connected  with  the  manufacture 
of  iron  and  steel  in  this  country  were  to  be  made  the  subject 
of  historical  and  statistical  inquiry.  The  most  important 
of  these  inventions,  and  the  history  of  their  introduction 
in  our  country,  have  been  referred  to  in  preceding  chapters. 
Several  subjects  of  less  prominence,  but  all  of  them  relating 
to  the  mechanical  development  of  our  iron  and  steel  indus- 
tries, will  now  be  noticed,  with  which  notice  this  branch  of 
our  general  subject  will  be  dismissed. 

At  the  Siberian  rolling  mill  of  Rogers  &  Burch field,  at 
Leechburg,  in  Armstrong  county,  Pennsylvania,  natural  gas, 
taken  from  a  well  1,200  feet  deep,  was  first  used  as  a  fuel  in 
the  manufacture  of  iron.  In  the  fall  of  1874  it  was  stated 
that  during  the  preceding  six  months  the  gas  had  furnish- 
ed all  the  fuel  required  for  puddling,  heating,  and  making 
steam,  not  one  bushel  of  coal  having  been  used.  Between 
1874  and  1881  natural  gas  for  puddling  was  successfully 
used  «,t  the  same  rolling  mill  at  Leechburg ;  at  the  works 
of  Spang,  Chalfant  &  Co.  and  Graff,  Bennett  &  Co.,  in  Alle- 
gheny county,  Pennsylvania  ;  and  at  the  rolling  mill  of  the 
Kittanning  Iron  Company,  at  Kittaiining,  Pennsylvania. 
In  each  instance  the  gas  used  at  these  works  was  obtained 
from  wells  that  were  sunk  for  oil  but  were  found  to  produce 
only  gas.  Since  1881  natural  gas  has  been  introduced  into 
many  iron  and  steel  works  in  Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  Indiana, 
and  West  Virginia.  In  1884,  however,  there  were  still  only 
six  rolling  mills  and  steel  works  in  the  United  States  which 
used  natural  gas  as  fuel.  In  1886  there  were  68 ;  in  Novem- 
ber, 1887,  there  were  96 ;  and  in  November,  1889,  there  were 
104.  Since  the  last  date  the  use  of  natural  gas  in  our  iron 
and  steel  works  has  greatly  declined,  owing  to  a  failure  of 
the  supply  in  many  places.  The  method  employed  in  using 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  461 

natural  gas  at  Kittanning  in  the   summer   of  1881  is  here 
preserved  as  a  matter  of  historical  interest. 

The  gas  is  brought  from  a  well  some  three  miles  distant,  in  four-inch 
casing,  and  at  the  mill  is  distributed  amongst  eighteen  boiling  furnaces. 
The  furnaces  are  the  same  as  those  in  which  coal  is  used.  The  gas  enters 
the  rear  of  the  furnace  in  three  small  pipes,  shaped  at  the  end  like  a  nozzle. 
There  being  quite  a  pressure  the  gas  enters  with  considerable  force,  and  by 
means  of  dampers  to  regulate  the  draft  an  intense  and  uniform  heat  is  ob- 
tained. After  a  heat  the  furnace  is  cooled  and  prepared  for  the  next  heat 
in  the  same  manner  as  with  coal.  When  the  metal  is  in  place  the  gas  is 
turned  on,  and  the  operation  of  puddling  is  the  same,  with  the  exception 
that  it  is  somewhat  slower.  Only  one-half  of  the  well's  production  of  gas 
is  in  fact  consumed  by  the  eighteen  furnaces  here  described.  The  puddlers 
like  the  gas  very  much,  as  it  reduces  their  labor  to  some  extent,  and  they 
say  they  can  make  better  weight  than  with  coal.  The, furnaces  being  free 
from  sulphur  a  better  quality  of  iron  is  produced,  and  it  brings  a  slightly 
advanced  price  in  the  market.  These  furnaces  have  been  running  all  the 
time  for  some  months  past,  and  have  used  nothing  but  gas  for  fuel,  which 
has  proved  satisfactory  in  every  respect,  and  is  found  to  be  much  cheaper 
than  coal. 

We  have  previously  recorded  the  erection  in  1817,  at 
^Plumsock,  in  Fayette  aaunty,  Pennsylvania,  of  the  first  roll- 
ing mill  in  the  United  States 'for  the  production  of  bar  iron. 
The  first  puddling  in  this  country  was  also  done  at  this  roll- 
ing mill  in  the  same  year.  It  may  seem  strange  to  many  of 
the  present  generation,  who  witness  the  number  and  magni- 
tude of  our  iron  and  steel  establishments,  that  such  impor- 
tant processes  as  the  puddling  of  pig  iron  and  the  rolling 
of  bar  iron  should  not  have  been  introduced  into  the  United 
States  until  1817,  but  after  careful  inquiry  we  have  been  un- 
able to  place  their  introduction  at  an  earlier  period.  Ralph 
Crooker,  recently  of  the  Bay  State  iron  works,  at  Boston,  the 
oldest  rolling-mill  superintendent  in  the  United  States,  writes 
us  that  the  first  bar  iron  rolled  in  New  England  was  rolled 
at  the  Boston  iron  works,  on  the  mill-dam  in  Boston,  in  1825, 
and  that  the  first  puddling  done  in  New  England  was  at 
Boston,  on  the  mill-dam,  by  Lyman,  Ralston  &  Co.,  in  1835. 

Before  the  use  of  bituminous  and  anthracite  coal  became 
general  in  this  country  wood  as  it  comes  from  the  forest  was 
sometimes  used  to  puddle  pig  iron,  as  it  is  now  used  at  some 
places  in  Sweden,  and  it  was  also  used  in  the  heating  furna- 
ces of  rolling  mills.  From  1821  to  1825  the  Fall  River  roll- 
ing mill,  in  Massachusetts,  used  wood  irrigating  iron  for  nail 


462  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

plates.  In  1848  pig  iron  was  puddled  with  wood  at  Adiron- 
dack, in  Essex  county,  New  York.  Prior  to  1850  puddling 
with  wood  was  done  at  Horatio  Ames's  works  at  Falls  Vil- 
lage, in  Connecticut.  In  1858  the  Hurricane  rolling  mill  and 
nail  works,  on  Pacolet  river,  43  miles  west  of  Yorkville,  in 
/  South  Carolina,  used  dry  pine  wood  in  its  puddling  and  heat- 
ing  furnaces;  and  in  the  preceding  year  the  Cherokee  Ford 
rolling  mill,  on  Broad  river,  in  Union  county,  in  the  same 
State,  used  "splint"  wood  for  the  same  purpose. 

The  Phoenix  wrought-iron  column,  or  wrought-steel  col- 
umn, which  is  now  in  general  use  in  this  country  and  in 
Europe  in  the  construction  of  bridges,  viaducts,  depots,  ware- 
houses, and  other  structures,  is  the  invention  of  the  late 
Samuel  J.  Reeves,  of  Philadelphia,  a  member  of  the  Phoenix 
Iron  Company,  of  Phosnixville,  Pennsylvania.  The  invention 
was  patented  on  June  17,  1862. 

Down  to  1846,  when  John  Griffen  built  a  rolling  mill  at 
Norristown,  Pennsylvania,  for  Moore  &  Hooven,  steam  boil- 
ers had  never  been  put  over  puddling  and  heating  furnaces 
in  any  country.  In  this  mill •  all  the  steam  that  was  needed 
for  driving  the  mill  was  generated  in  boilers  over  the  pud- 
dling and  heating  furnaces,  no  auxiliary  boilers  being  used, 
thus  greatly  economizing  fuel.  Mr.  Griffen  met  with  much 
opposition  from  observers  while  engaged  in  constructing  the 
mill  upon  this  plan,  and  many  predictions  were  made  that 
the  new  arrangement  would  be  a  failure.  It  was  a  great  in- 
novation on  the  practice  then  prevailing,  but  it  was  a  com- 
plete success,  and  its  general  adoption  has  effected  a  saving 
in  fuel  to  the  iron  manufacturers  in  this  country  of  many 
millions  of  dollars. 

In  1856  two  shafts  were  made  for  the  steamship  Adriatic 
at  the  Reading  steam  forge,  at  Reading,  Pennsylvania.  Each 
shaft  when  finished  was  35 \  feet  in  length,  27  J  inches  in  di- 
ameter, and  weighed  78,500  pounds,  or  35  tons.  Two  cranks 
of  12-foot  stroke  were  made  at  the  same  time,  each  weighing 
when  finished  18,800  pounds,  or  8.39  tons.  The  forge  was 
then  the  largest  and  most  complete  in  this  country.  It  con- 
tained four  hammers,  of  -J,  f ,  1.-J-,  and  7  tons'  weight  respect- 
ively. An  account  of  the  forging  of  the  shafts  says:  "The 
shafts  of  the  Adriatic  were  forged  in  twelve  working  days 


IRON   IN   ALL    AGES.  463 

each.  They  were  commenced  on  what  is  called  a  porter 
bar,  forming  a  tapering  handle,  to  which  are  attached  levers, 
or  cranks,  to  turn  the  shaft  in  its  slings  while  under  the 
hammer.  The  porter  bar  was  first  heated,  and  then  flattened 
at  its  thick  end  to  receive  a  pile  of  bloom  bars  each  about 
250  pounds'  weight,  all  of  which  were  welded  solid  with 
each  other  and  the  bar,  thus  forming  the  commencement  of 
the  shaft  itself.  The  end  of  the  shaft  thus  commenced  was 
again  heated  to  receive  another  pile  of  bars  as  already  de- 
scribed, and  the  same  process  thus  repeated  until  the  shaft 
was  made  the  length  required.  When  the  shaft  becomes 
sufficiently  long  the  porter  bar  is  cut  off  and  the  turning 
cranks  attached  to  the  shaft  itself." 

On  the  6th  of  September,  1881,  Park,  Brother  &  Co.,  of 
^Pittsburgh,  put  in  operation  for  the  first  time  their  17-ton 
steam  hammer,  which  was  for  many  years  the  largest  in  the 
United  States.  It  will  work  steel  ingots  two  feet  square. 
The  hammer  itself  was  built  by  William  B.  Bement  &  Son, 
of  Philadelphia.  The  anvil,  which  was  the  heaviest  iron  cast- 
ing then  made  in  this  country,  weighing  160  tons,  was  cast  a 
few  feet  from  its  place  with  five  cupolas,  under  the  direction 
of  Park,  Brother  &  Co.,  on  October  5,  1880.  It  is  11  feet 
high,  and  measures  8  by  10  feet  at  the  base  and  4  by  6  feet 
at  the  top.  The  hammer  and  its  fittings  occupy  a  ground 
space  26  feet  long  by  13  feet  wide.  Its  height  from  the 
ground  is  32  feet.  The  framing  is  of  wrought-iron  plates 
from  J-  of  an  inch  to  1J  inches  thick,  bolted  and  riveted  and 
strengthened  with  angle  irons.  The  weight  of  the  cast-iron 
cylinder  is  about  11  tons,  the  bore  is  40  inches,  and  the 
stroke  9  feet.  The  piston,  rod,  ram,  and  die  weigh  about 
17  tons.  When  the  steam  is  admitted  on  top  of  the  piston 
it,  wTill  produce  an  additional  force  or  weight  of  about  50 
tons,  making  67  tons'  pressure  in  all  when  the  ram  or  ham- 
mer is  stationary.  The  whole  cost  of  the  hammer,  anvil, 
and  fittings,  ready  for  operation,  is  estimated  at  $52,000.  In 
August,  1883,.  Park,  Brother  &  Co.  forged  with  this  hammer 
a  steel  steamboat  shaft  32£  feet  long  and  weighing  30,240 
pounds,  or  13£  tons.  The  ingots  used,  which  were  of  open- 
hearth  steel,  weighed  32,000  pounds.  The  shaft  was  hexag- 
onal in  the  centre,  tapering  at  each  end  to  a  circular  shape. 


464  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Since  the  completion  of  the  17-ton  hammer  above  de- 
scribed two  other  hammers  of  still  larger  proportions  have 
been  erected  in  this  country,  namely,  the  20-ton  hammer  of 
the  Latrobe  steel  works,  at  Latrobe,  Pennsylvania,  and  the 
larger  hammer  of  the  Midvale  steel  works,  at  Philadelphia, 
both  employing  steam  pressure  to  increase  their  forging  pow- 
er. But  it  has  been  left  for  the  Bethlehem  Iron  Company  to 
erect  the  largest  and  most  efficient  hammer  in  the  world — a 
single-acting  hammer  of  125  tons.  We  are  indebted  to  Lieu- 
tenant W.  H.  Jaques,  ordnance  engineer  of  the  Bethlehem 
Iron  Company,  for  the  following  description  of  this  hammer. 

The  building  in  which  this  hammer  has  been  erected  is  500  feet  long, 
and  is  located  on  ground  that  was  partly  an  island  and  partly  the  bed  of 
the  southern  channel  of  the  Lehigh  river,  turned  from  its  course  to  pro- 
vide the  hammer  site.  A  pit  60  feet  square  was  excavated  below  the  water 
level,  and  piles  were  thickly  driven  both  for  the  anvil  foundation  an<i 
hammer  frames.  The  stone  walls  for  supporting  the  latter  have  a  depth 
of  30  feet,  separated  from  the  anvil  foundation  lest  any  sinking  of  this 
latter  should  affect  the .  framework  of  the  structure  itself. 

The  hammer  was  designed  by  Mr.  John  Fritz,  chief  engineer  and  su- 
perintendent of  the  company;  all  of  its  parts  were  manufactured  at  the 
works ;  and,  although  the  officers  of  the  Bethlehem  Iron  Company  had  free 
consultation  with  the.  owners  of  the  Creusot  works  in  France,  the  ham- 
mer differs  radically  in  many  points  from  the  celebrated  Creusot  hammer. 
It  rises  to  a  height  of  90  feet  from  the  floor  line.  The  housings  proper  are 
each  composed  of  two  parts,  the  lower  ones  weighing  71  tons  each,  the 
upper  ones  48  tons  each.  These  are  bolted  together  and  surmounted  by 
an  entablature  of  61  tons,  carrying  a  76-inch  cylinder  24  feet  high.  The 
housings  are  clamped  to  base  plates,  each  10  feet  by  8  feet,  and  weighing 
56  tons,  giving  a  42-foot  longitudinal  wTidth  of  frame  and  a  working  floor 
width  inside  of  housings  of.  22  feet. 

A  16-inch  steel  piston  rod,  40  feet  long,  operates  the  enormous  tup, 
which  is  composed  of  three  parts,  two  forming  the  ram  and  a  third  the  die. 
The  hammer  is  single-acting,  (steam-lifting  only,)  the  total  weight  of  fall- 
ing parts,  length  of  stroke,  and  gravity  governing  the  work  done. 

The  anvil  foundation  consists  of  piles  driven  to  bed-rock  or  gravel, 
with  timber  frames,  steel  slabs  and  22  iron  blocks  carefully  machined  and 
fitted  forming  a  metal  mass  of  1,800  tons  arranged  in  the  form  of  a  pyr- 
amid. To  secure  an  even  floor  for  working  the  spaces  between  the  frame 
and  anvil  foundations  are  closed  with  cribbing,  leaving  exposed  only  the 
anvil  block.  The  special  valve  gears  designed  at  Bethlehem  have  worked 
most  satisfactorily,  one  man  easily  controlling  the  motions  with  one  hand. 

The  hammer  is  served  by  four  heating  furnaces,  conveniently  placed, 
and  by  four  gigantic  cranes,  each  of  300  tons'  capacity,  having  longitudinal, 
transverse,  vertical,  and  turning  motions,  by  which  every  required  position 
and  movement  of  the  forgings  can  be  easily  controlled. 

In  describing  this  hammer  as  one  of  125  tons  it  is  meant  that  the 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  465 

weight  of  the  tup,  (including  die,)  piston,  and  rod  is  125  tons,  which,  fall- 
ing a  distance  of  16£  feet,  (full  stroke,)  without  top  steam,  produces  the  full 
power  of  the  hammer.  As  such  the  following  hammers  have  comparative 
weights:  Sir  William  G.  Armstrong,  Mitchell  &'Co.  Limited,  Elswick,  Eng- 
land, 35  tons;  Woolwich,  England,  35  tons;  Perm,  Eussia,  50  tons;  Abou- 
koff  Steel  Works,  Russia,  50  tons ;  Krupp,  Essen,  Germany,  50  tons ;  St. 
diamond,  France,  80  tons ;  Schneider  &  Co.,  Creusot,  France,  100  tons ;  Mar- 
rel  Brothers,  Rive  de  Gier,  France,  100  tons;  and  the  Terni  Steel  Works, 
Italy,  100  tons.  All  these  hammers  are  single-acting  except  those  at  Els- 
wick,  Woolwich,  and  Aboukoff. 

Begun  in  1889  the  Bethlehem  hammer  was  successfully  put  in  opera- 
tion on  June  30,  1891,  since  which  time  many  huge  forgings  for  armor 
plates  and  other  war  and  structural  material  have  been  shaped  under  it. 

In  1884  there  were  still  in  existence  in  this  country  sev- 
eral old-fashioned  slitting  mills,  which  were  used  spasmodic- 
ally in  the  conversion  of  iron  into  nail  rods.  There  was  a 
slitting  mill  at  the  Cambridge  rolling  mills  near  Boston ;  at 
the  Norway  steel  and  iron  works  at  South  Boston ;  at  the 
Eagle  iron  works  at  Roland,  Centre  county,  Pennsylvania ; 
and  at  the  Oxford  iron  and  steel  works  at  Frankford,  in 
Philadelphia.  The  demand  for  slit  nail  rods  grows  less, 
however,  every  year,  and  it  is  probable  that  even  the  occa- 
sional use  of  the  slitting  mills  above  mentioned  will  soon  be 
a  thing  of  the  past. 

In  his  History  of  Philadelphia  (1884)  Thompson  Westcott 
says  that  the  first  wire  suspension  bridge  in  the  United  States, 
if  not  in  the  world,  was  thrown  across  the  Schuylkill  river, 
near  the  Falls  of  Schuylkill,  in  Philadelphia,  in  1816.  Its 
history  is  as  follows :  In  1809  Robert  Kennedy  and  Conrad 
Carpenter  built  a  chain  bridge  at  the  Falls  of  Schuylkill 
which  broke  down  in  1811.  Josiah  White  and  Erskine  Haz- 
ard, afterwards  prominent  as  the  pioneers  in  the  anthracite 
coal  trade  of  Pennsylvania,  had  erected  a  rolling  mill  and  a 
wire  factory  in  the  neighborhood,  and  after  the  bridge  fell 
they  formed  a  new  company  and  another  chain  bridge  was 
constructed  in  April,  1811,  but  this  new  bridge  in  turn  gave 
way  in  1816.  White  &  Hazard  then  swung  a  wire  suspen- 
sion bridge  across  the  river  from  an  upper  window  of  their 
factory  to  some  large  trees  on  the  west  bank,  steps  leading 
from  the  trees  to  the  ground.  This  primitive  bridge  struct- 
ure was  intended  for  foot  passengers  only,  and  but  eight 
persons  were  allowed  to  go  upon  the  footway  at  one  time. 


466  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

The  bridge  is  said  to  have  cost  $125.  We  find  the  essential 
parts  of  this  statement  accepted  and  presented  in  detail  in  a 
lecture  delivered  before  the  Engineers'  Club  of  Philadelphia, 
in  1884,  by  Professor  L.  M.  Haupt. 

Wire  fences  are  not  a  new  thing  under  the  sun.  As  far 
back  as  1816  they  were  in  limited  use  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Philadelphia.  The  wire  was  manufactured  by  White  & 
Hazard  at  their  wire  works  at  the  Falls  of  Schuylkill.  In 
a  communication  from  this  firm  to  Richard  Peters,  "  Presi- 
dent of  the  Agricultural  Society,"  dated  January  2, 1816,  the 
use  of  wire  fences  was  recommended,  and  an  elaborate  cal- 
culation was  given  to  show  the  economy  there  would  be-  in 
using  them.  In  speaking  of  the  strength  of  a  wire  fence 
they  said :  "  We  have  given  it  a  fair  trial  at  the  Falls,  with 
the  most  breachy  cows  of  the  neighborhood,  and  it  is  re- 
markable that  even  dogs  avoid  passing  over  it."  It  was  rec- 
ommended that  "  living  trees "  be  used  as  a  substitute  for 
posts,  and  that  the  wire  used  be  protected  by  a  coating  of 
linseed  oil  or  paint.  The  fence  at  the  Falls  was  without 
barbs,  which  are  a  modern  invention. 

Samuel  J.  Reeves  was  born  at  Bridgeton,  New  Jersey,  on 
March  4, 1818,  and  died  at  Phoenixville  on  December  15, 1878, 
aged*  over  60  years.  For  many  years  prior  to  his  death  he 
had  been  President  of  the  American  Iron  and  Steel  Associa- 
tion and  the  head  of  the  Phoenix  Iron  Company. 

John  Griffen  was  born  at  Mamaroneck,  in  Westchester 
county,  New  York,  on  February  16,  1812,  and  died  at  Phoe- 
nixville, Pennsylvania,  on  January  14,  1884,  aged  nearly  72 
years.  He  was  the  inventor  of  the  Griffen  gun,  and  was  for 
many  years  the  general  superintendent  of  the  Phoenix  iron 
works,  at  Phoenixville. 

Ralph  Crooker,  the  oldest  rolling-mill  superintendent  in 
the  United  States  at  the  time  of  his  death,  was  born  in  the 
town  of  Bridgewater,  Massachusetts,  on  May  28,  1801,  and 
died  at  Roxbury,  Massachusetts,  on  March  2,  1886,  aged  al- 
most 85  years. 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  467 


CHAPTER    LIV. 

EARLY    DISCOVERIES    OF    COAL  IN    THE    UNITED 

STATES. 

THE  abundance  and  wide  distribution  of  mineral  fuel  in 
the  United  States  have  greatly  assisted  in  the  development 
of  our  iron  and  steel  industries.  A  notice  of  the  early  discov- 
eries of  coal  in  our  country  therefore  properly  finds  a  place 
in  these  pages. 

In  the  Statistics  of  Coal,  by  Richard  Cowling  Taylor, 
published  in  1848,  it  is  stated  that  the  earliest  historic  men- 
tion of  coal  in  this  country  is  by  the  French  Jesuit  mission- 
ary, Father  Hennepin,  who  saw  traces  of  bituminous  coal  on 
the  Illinois  river  in  1679.  In  his  journal  he  marks  the  site 
of  a  "cole  mine"  above  Fort  Crevecoeur,  near  the  present 
town  of  Ottawa,  in  Illinois. 

We  find  the  next  historic  reference  to  coal  in  this  country 
in  a  letter  written  by  William  Byrd,  of  Virginia,  the  first  of 
the  name,  on  May  10th  and  llth,  1701,  in  part  as  follows : 
"•  The  10th  of  May,  last,  I  with  Coll.  Randolph,  Capt.  Epes, 
Capt.  Webb,  &c.,  went  up  to  the  new  settlements  of  ye  ffrench 
Refugees  at  ye  Manakan  Town.  .  .  .  Wee  went  up  to  ye 
Cole,  w'ch  is  not  above  a  mile  and  a  half  from  their  settle- 
ment on  the  great  upper  Creeke,  w'ch,  riseing  very  high  in 
great  Raines  hath  washed  away  the  Banke  that  the  Coal  lyes 
bare,  otherwise  it's  very  deep  in  the  Earth,  the  land  being  very 
high,  and  near  the  surface  is  plenty  of  Slate."  The  discov- 
ery of  coal  had  been  made  by  a  Huguenot  settler.  The  In- 
dian town  referred  to  was  situated  about  twenty  miles  above 
Richmond,  on  the  south  side  of  the  James  river,  now  in  Pow- 
hatan  county.  For  the  above  information  we  are  indebted  to 
the  courtesy  of  Mr.  R.  A.  Brock,  of  Richmond. 

In  his  account  of  A  Progress  to  the  Mines  of  Virginia  in 
1732,  from  which  we  have  quoted  in  our  Virginia  chapter, 
Colonel  Wm.  Byrd,  in  describing  the  air  furnace  at  Massapo- 
nax,  gives  us  the  earliest  mention  of  the  use  of  coal  in  this 
country  that  we  have  found.  He  says  :  "  There  is  an  opening 


468 


THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


about  a  foot  square  for  the  fresh  air  to  pass  through  from 
without.  This  leads  up  to  an  iron  grate  that  holds  about 
half  a  bushel  of  sea  coal."  This  "  sea  coal "  was  probably 
brought  from  over  the  sea. 

In  the  map  of  the  middle  colonies,  published  by  Lewis 
Evans  in  1755,  we  find  mention  of  coal  in  Ohio,  but  no  men- 
tion of  coal  is  made  anywhere  within  the  limits  of  Penn- 
sylvania. In  Nicholas  Scull's  map  of  Pennsylvania,  publish- 
ed, in  1759,  coal  is  not  marked.  But  Mr.  Hungerford  calls 
our  attention  to  the  fact  that  coal  in  Western  Pennsylvania 
is  mentioned  in  1759  in  the  journal  of  Colonel  James  Burd, 
written  in  that  year.  Colonel  Burd  was  in  command  of  a 
detachment  of  200  of  the  king's  troops,  who  were  opening 
a  road  from  Braddock's  old  road  at  Gist's  plantation  (now 
Mount  Braddock)  to  the  Monongahela  river  at  the  mouth  of 
Dunlap's  creek.  Mr.  Hungerford  says  that,  having  proceeded 
from  Gist's  toward  the  Monongahela  to  a  point  about  four 
and  a  half  miles  from  the  river,  Colonel  Burd  encamped 
there  on  the  evening  of  the  21st  of  September,  and  on  the 
following  day  moved  on  westward  and  made  in  his  journal 
this  entry,  namely  :  "  Saturday,  Sept.  22,  1759.  The  camp 
moved  two  miles  to  Coal  Run.  This  run  is  entirely  paved 
in  the  bottom  with  fine  stone  coal,  and  the  hill  on  the  south 
of  it  is  a  rock  of  the  finest  coal  I  ever  saw.  I  burned  about 
a  bushel  of  it  on  my  fire." 

A  coal  seam  near  Pittsburgh  took  fire  in  1765  and  is  said 
to  have  burned  steadily  for  sixteen  years.  In  William  Scull's 
map  of  Pennsylvania,  published  in  1770,  coal  is  marked  in 
Berks  county  and  at  Pittsburgh.  In  George  Washington's 
journal  of  a  tour  to  the  Ohio  river  in  1770  he  says,  under 
date  of  October  14th  of  that  year:  "At  Captain  Crawford's 
all  day.  We  went  to  see  a  coal  mine  not  far  from  his  house, 
on  the  banks  of  the  river.  The  coal  seemed  to  be  of  the  very 
best  kind,  burning  freely,  and  abundance  of  it."  The  Cap- 
tain Crawford  referred  to  was  the  celebrated  and  unfortunate 
William  Crawford,  and  his  residence  at  the  time  of  Washing- 
ton's visit  was  at  Stuart's  Crossing,  on  the  Youghiogheny  riv- 
er, where  New  Haven  now  stands,  opposite  Connellsville. 

In  1763  Colonel  Croghan,  a  British  officer,  noticed  on 
the  south  side  of  the  Wabash  river  "  a  high  bank  in  which 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  469 

are  several  fine  coal  mines,"  which  is  the  earliest  reference, 
says  Taylor,  to  coal  in  that  region.  In  the  map  of  Captain 
Hutchins,  published  at  London  in  1777,  coal  deposits  are 
marked  at  various  places  in  the  basin  of  the  Ohio  river. 

In  a  paper  read  before  the  Historical  Society  of  Penn- 
sylvania on  the  4th  day  of  January,  1875,  Mr.  William  J. 
Buck  quotes  from  the  Penn  manuscripts  to  show  that  the 
Penns  were  fully  aware  as  early  as  1769  of  the  existence  of 
coal  at  Pittsburgh.  Thomas  Penn,  in  a  letter  of  instructions 
dated  at  London,  January  31,  1769,  to  his  nephew,  Lieuten- 
ant Governor  John  Penn,  says  :  "  We  desire  you  will  order 
5,000  acres  of  land  to  be  laid  out  about  Pittsburgh,  including 
the  town,  which  may  now  be  laid  out,  and  I  think  from  its 
situation  will  become  considerable  in  time ;  and  that  the  land 
may  be  laid  out  to  Colonel  Francis  and  his  associates,  and 
other  gentlemen  of  whom  I  wrote,  as  contiguous  as  it  may 
be,  and  in  regular  right-angled  tracts,  if  possible."  On  the 
following  12th  of  May  he  writes  to  Mr.  Tilghman  respecting 
this  survey,  and  says :  "  I  would  not  engross  all  the  coal-hills, 
but  rather  leave  the  greater  part  to  others  who  may  work 
them."  The  difficulties  between  the  mother  country  and  her 
colonies  prevented  these  instructions  from  being  carried  out. 

In  1784,  however,  the  Penns,  who  retained  their  propri- 
etary interest  in  large  tracts  of  Pennsylvania  after  the  close 
of  the  Revolution,  including  the  manor  of  Pittsburgh,  sur- 
veyed into  building  lots  the  town  of  Pittsburgh,  and  in  the 
same  year  the  privilege  of  mining  coal  in  the  "  great  seam  " 
opposite  the  town  was  sold  at  the  rate  of  £30  for  each  min- 
ing lot,  extending  back  to  the  centre  of  the  hill.  This  event 
may  be  regarded  as  forming  the  beginning  of  the  coal  trade 
of  Pittsburgh. 

On  the  1st  of  November,  1785,  Samuel  Boyd  patented  a 
tract  of  bituminous  coal  land  near  Oldtown,  in  Clearfield 
county,  Pennsylvania,  but  no  coal  from  this  tract  was  sent 
east  of  the  Alleghenies  until  1804.  In  that  year  William 
Boyd  shipped  the  first  ark-load  of  Clearfield  county  coal  down 
the  Susquehanna  to  Columbia,  in  Lancaster  county,  a  distance 
of  260  miles.  The  new  fuel,  we  are  told,  "  was  a  matter  of 
great  surprise "  to  the  good  people  of  that  county.  Other 
ark -loads  followed  the  first  venture,  and  all  the  towns  along 


470  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

the  Susquehanna  were  soon  familiar  with  bituminous  coal. 
In  1828  the  first  cargo  of  Pennsylvania  bituminous  coal 
reached  Philadelphia  from  Karthaus,  in  Clearfield  county. 
This  coal  was  shipped  by  the  Allegheny  Coal  Company,  un- 
der the  superintendence  of  Dr.  Frederick  W.  Geissenhainer. 
The  coal  was  taken  down  the  Susquehanna  to  Port  Deposit, 
at  the  head  of  Chesapeake  bay,  and  thence  by  vessel  to  Phil- 
adelphia. About  the  same  time  coal  was  sent  to  Baltimore 
from  the  same  place.  The  distance  from  market  was  too 
great,  however,  and  the  means  of  transportation  too  imperfect 
to  permit  the  building  up  of  a  large  trade  in  bituminous  coal 
between  the  Alleghenies  and  the  seaboard,  and  the  situation 
was  not  materially  changed  for  many  years  after  the  comple- 
tion in  1834  of  the  Pennsylvania  system  of  internal  improve- 
ments. The  competition  of  domestic  anthracite  and  of  for- 
eign and  domestic  bituminous  coal,  the  last  mentioned  from 
Virginia  and  Maryland,  was  too  great  to  be  easily  overcome, 
and  in  the  case  of  anthracite  it  has  never  yet  been  over- 
come, although  the  shipments  of  Western  Pennsylvania  coal 
and  coke  to  the  seaboard  are  steadily  increasing. 

The  Virginia  coal  mines  were  most  likely  the  first  that 
were  worked  in  America.  Bituminous  mines  were  opened 
and  operated  on  the  James  river,  in  Chesterfield  county, 
probably  about  1750.  In  July,  1766,  in  the  Virginia  Gazette, 
Samuel  Duval  advertises  coal  for  sale  at  Rockett's,  a  lower 
landing  of  Richmond,  at  12d.  per  bushel,  "  equal  to  Newcastle 
coal."  Virginia  coal  was  extensively  used  during  the  Revolu- 
tion. An  air  furnace  was  built  at  Westham,  on  the  James 
river,  above  Richmond,  which  used  coal  in  the  manufacture 
of  shot  and  shell  for  the  Revolutionary  army.  Virginia 
coal. was  exported  to  various  cities  on  the  Atlantic  coast  be- 
fore the  Revolution.  On  the  31st  of  August,  1776,  Thomas 
Wharton,  Jr.,  and  Owen  Biddle,  of  Philadelphia,  were  au- 
thorized to  employ  proper  persons  to  bring  coal  from  Vir- 
ginia which  had  been  contracted  for  by  the  Committee  of 
Safety.  In  1789  Virginia  coal  sold  in  Philadelphia  at  Is.  6d. 
a  bushel.  In  1846  the  price  at  the  same  city  was  20  to  22 
cents  a  bushel,  which  was  two  or  three  cents  per  bushel  high- 
er than  Allegheny  bituminous  coal.  It  was  the  scarcity  of 
Virginia  coal  in  the  Philadelphia  market,  especially  during 


IRON    IN    ALL    AGES.  471 

the  war  with  Great  Britain  from  1812  to  1815,  which  largely 
contributed  in  the  early  part  of  the  present  century  to  the 
development  of  the  vast  anthracite  coal  deposits  of  Pennsyl- 
vania. The  exportation  of  Virginia  coal  amounted  to  42,- 
000  tons  in  1822,  and  it  reached  its  culmination  in  1833, 
when  142,000  tons  were  shipped  to  neighboring  States.  In 
1842  the  shipments  had  fallen  to  65,000  tons.  Up  to  about 
that  year  it  was  a  leading  source  of  the  domestic  supply  of 
mineral  fuel  in  this  country,  and  down  to  about  1850  it  con- 
tributed the  principal  supply  to  the  gas  works  of  Philadel- 
phia and  other  American  cities,  for  which  use  it  was  well 
adapted.  For  about  twenty  years  after  1833  the  importation 
of  bituminous  coal  from  Great  Britain  and  the  British  prov- 
inces into  Philadelphia,  principally  for  the  gas  works,  stead- 
ily increased,  owing  to  the  growing  scarcity  of  Virginia  coal. 
About  1845  coal  from  the  Pittsburgh  seam  began  to  be  used 
in  Philadelphia,  transportation  being  by  the  Pennsylvania 
Canal,  and  about  1855  the  gas  coal  of  Western  Pennsylvania, 
on  the  line  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  was  introduced  into 
Philadelphia. 

Coal  is  improbably  said  to  have  been  discovered  six  miles 
northeast  of  Baltimore  by  Benjamin  Henfrey  in  1801.  The 
Western  Maryland  coal  basin  was  soon  afterwards  opened, 
and  in  1820  the  first  shipment  of  coal  from  Alleghany  coun- 
ty, Maryland,  seems  to  have  been  made,  when  a  few  thou- 
sand tons  were  sent  down  the  Potomac  in  boats.  In  1832 
the  annual  shipment  of  Cumberland  coal  down  the  Potomac 
had  increased  to  about  300,000  bushels,  most  of  which  was 
not  sent  below  Harper's  Ferry.  The  price  of  Cumberland 
coal  at  tidewater  at  Georgetown  in  the  District  of  Columbia 
in  1838  was  20  cents  a  bushel.  In  1842  the  shipment  of 
Cumberland  coal  to  Baltimore  by  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio 
Railroad  was  commenced,  with  a  total  tonnage  of  1,708  tons. 

In  1804  the  first  discovery  of  coal  west  of  the  Mississippi 
was  made  by  the  exploring  expedition  under  the  leadership 
of  Lewis  and  Clarke,  who  traced  brown  coal  or  lignite  from 
about  twenty  miles  above  the  Mandan  villages,  on  the  Mis- 
souri, nearly  to  the  base  of  the  Rocky  mountains,  and  also 
upon  the  Yellowstone  and  other  streams.  In  one  of  the  ex- 
ploring expeditions  through  Louisiana  Territory  which  was 


472  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

led  by  Captain  Z.  M.  Pike  "  fine  seams  of  coal "  were  dis- 
covered "far  up  the  Osage  river"  in  1806. 

Anthracite  coal  was  discovered  in  the  Wyoming  valley  as 
early  as  1766,  as  appears  from  Mr.  Buck's  paper.  He  says 
that  James  Tilghman,  of  Philadelphia,  addressed  a  letter  to 
the  Proprietaries,  Thomas  and  Richard  Penn,  at  Spring  Gar- 
den, London,  on  the  14th  day  of  August,  1766,  in  which  he 
stated  that  his  brother-in-law,  Colonel  Francis,  had  gone  "  up 
the  N.  E.  Branch  as  far  as  Wyoming,  where  he  says  there  is 
a  considerable  body  of  good  land  and  a  very  great  fund  of 
coal  in  the  hills,  which  surround  a  very  fine  and  extensive 
bottom  there.  This  coal  is  thought  to  be  very  fine.  With  his 
compliments  he  sends  you  a  piece  of  the  coal.  This  bed  of 
coal,  situate  as  it  is  on  the  side  of  the  river,  may  some  time 
or  other  be  a  thing  of  great  value."  By  way  of  postscript  he 
adds :  "  The  coal  is  in  a  small  package  of  the  Governor's." 
In  a  reply  from  Thomas  Penn  to  Mr.  Tilghman,  dated  at 
London  on  the  following  7th  of  November,  he  says,  in  ac- 
knowledgment :  "  I  desire  you  will  return  my  thanks  to  Col- 
onel Francis  for  his  good  services  in  removing  the  intruders 
that  were  settled  on  the  Indians'  land,  and  for  the  piece  of 
coal,  which  we  shall  have  examined  by  some  persons  skillful 
in  that  article  and  send  their  observations  on  it."  It  is  fur- 
ther stated  by  Mr.  Buck  that  the  next  mention  of  coal  in  this 
section  is  in  a  draft  by  Charles  Stewart  from  a  survey  made 
in  1768  of  a  large  tract  of  land  on  the  west  side  of  the 
Susquehanna,  opposite  to  the  present  city  of  Wilkesbarre, 
which  has  "  stone  coal "  marked  thereon.  The  German  trav- 
eler, Dr.  Schoepf,  tells  us  that  in  1783  he  found  specimens 
of  coal  in  the  Swatara  creek,  in  Lebanon  county,  and  learned 
of  its  existence  up  the  west  branch  of  the  Susquehanna. 

The  Wyoming  valley  was  partly  settled  by  a  colony  of 
Connecticut  people  in  1762,  representing  "  The  Susquehanna 
Company."  In  the  same  year  the  Indians  murdered  about 
twenty  of  the  colony  and  the  remainder  of  the  settlers  were 
driven  away.  Gradually  the  survivors  and  others  associated 
with  them  returned  to  the  valley,  and  in  1768-9  it  is  claimed 
that  two  of  the  settlers,  being  two  brothers  named  Gore,  from 
Connecticut,  who  were  blacksmiths,  were  the  first  persons  in 
this  country  to  use  anthracite  coal,  using  it  in  a  forge  fire. 


IRON    IN    ALL   AGES.  473 

In  1776  and  throughout  the  Revolutionary  war  anthra- 
cite coal  was  taken  in  arks  from  the  Wyoming  mines  above 
Wilkesbarre  down  the  Susquehanna  to  the  United  States  ar- 
mory at  Carlisle.  Mr.  Buck  says  that  the  first  shipment  of 
about  twenty  tons  of  this  coal  "  was  obtained  from  a  bed 
belonging  to  Judge  Hollenback,  one  mile  above  Wilkesbarre, 
near  the  mouth  of  Mill  creek."  S.  H.  Daddow  says  in  the 
American  Cydopcedia  that  some  of  it  also  came  from  the  old 
Smith  mine  in  the  vicinity  of  Plymouth. 

At  Carbondale,  in  the  northeastern  section  of  the  Wyo- 
ming coal  field,  anthracite  coal  was  discovered  in  1804  by  a 
surveyor  named  Samuel  Preston,  and  in  1814  William  and 
Maurice  Wurtz  commenced  to  make  arrangements  for  its  de- 
velopment. In  1815,  after  many  discouraging  attempts,  they 
succeeded  in  sending  one  ark-load  of  coal  to  Philadelphia 
through  the  Lackawaxen  and  Delaware  rivers,  but  the  ex- 
periment was  not  repeated  until  1823,  after  which  shipments 
to  Philadelphia  were  successfully  made. 

Anthracite  coal  appears  to  have  been  known  to  the  set- 
tlers within  the  limits  of  the  Schuylkill  coal  field  as  early 
as  1770.  In  William  Scull's  map  of  Pennsylvania,  publish- 
ed in  that  year,  "  coal  "  is  marked  about  the  head  waters  of 
Schuylkill  creek,  thence  stretching  westward  to  those  of  the 
Swatara  and  to  "the  wilderness  of  St.  Anthony."  This  "wil- 
derness," we  may  mention,  extended  from  Peters's  mount- 
ain, in  Dauphin  county,  westward  to  the  Kittatinny  or  Blue 
mountains. 

The  act  of  the  Pennsylvania  legislature  of  March  15, 
1784,  for  the  improvement  of  the  navigation  of  the  Schuyl- 
kill, mentions  "  the  coal  mines  at  Basler's  saw-mill "  in 
Schuylkill  county.  A  hunter  named  Nicholas  Allen  is  said 
to  have  discovered  coal  in  1790  at  the  foot  of  Broad  mount- 
ain, in  the  same  county.  No  attempt  to  mine  the  coal  dis- 
covered by  Nicholas  Allen  seems  to  have  been  made.  Read- 
ing Howell,  in  his  map  of  Pennsylvania,  published  in  1792, 
marks  the  existence  of  "  coal "  near  the  source  of  Panther 
creek,  about  five  miles  east  of  the  present  town  of  Tamaqua, 
and  on  the  border  of  Carbon  county.  In  1795  a  blacksmith 
named  Whetstone  used  anthracite  coal  near  Pottsville,  while 
others  attempted  to  use  it  and  abandoned  it  in  disgust. 


474  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

About  1800  William  Morris  took  a  wagon-load  of  anthra- 
cite coal  from  near  Port  Carbon  to  Philadelphia,  but  nobody 
wanted  it,  and  Mr.  Morris  made  no  further  efforts  to  mine  or 
sell  coal.  About  1806  coal  was  found  at  Valley  Forge,  on  the 
Schuylkill  river,  and  a  blacksmith  named  David  Berlin  and 
others  successfully  used  it.  In  1812  Col.  George  Shoemaker, 
of  Pottsville,  loaded  nine  wagons  with  coal  from  his  mines 
at  Centreville  and  hauled  it  to  Philadelphia,  where  with 
great  difficulty  he  sold  two  loads  at  the  cost  of  transporta- 
tion and  gave  the  other  seven  loads  away.  He  was  by  many 
regarded  as  an  impostor  for  attempting  to  sell  stone  as  coal. 

The  first  discovery  of  anthracite  coal  in  the  Lehigh  re- 
gion is  said  to  have  been  made  in  the  Mauch  Chunk  mount- 
ain, about  nine  miles  west  of  Mauch  Chunk,  where  the  town 
of  Summit  Hill  is  now  located,  by  a  poor  hunter  named  Phil- 
ip Ginter,  in  1791.  Pieces  of  the  coal  discovered  by'Ginter 
were  taken  to  Colonel  Jacob  Weiss,  at  Fort  Allen,  who  opened 
a  "  quarry  "  in  the  coal  mountain  that  year.  The  discovery 
of  coal  on  the  Lehigh  was  announced  as  follows  in  the  New 
York  Magazine  for  February,  1792,  in  a  communication  dated 
Philadelphia,  January  31st:  "A  coal  mine  has  been  discovered 
on  the  Lehigh,  in  the  county  of  Northampton.  The  coal  yet 
found  is  small,  but  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  by 
searching  deeper  it  will  be  found  larger.  The  quality  is  good. 
If  this  natural  advantage  is  improved  it  will  be  a  prodigious 
resource  to  the  city  and  cheapen  the  article  of  fuel,  which 
now,  from  the  labor  of  transportation,  bears  a  high  price." 

In  1793  Colonel  Weiss,  John  Nicholson,  Michael  Hillegas, 
Charles  Cist,  Robert  Morris,  (of  Revolutionary  fame,)  J.  An- 
thony Morris,  and  others  organized  the  Lehigh  Coal  Mine 
Company,  which  obtained  control  of  about  six  thousand  acres 
of  coal  land,  and  several  tons  of  coal  were  soon  "  dug  up." 
But  there  was  no  market  nearer  than  Philadelphia,  and  there 
were  poor  means  of  communication  with  that  city.  It  was 
not  until  1803  that  the  company  succeeded  in  floating  two 
arks  to  Philadelphia,  through  the  Lehigh  and  Delaware  riv- 
ers, laden  with  two  hundred  tons  of  coal.  Five  arks  were 
started,  but  three,  of  these  were  wrecked.  The  coal,  however, 
could  not  be  made  to  burn,  probably  because  large  lumps 
were  used,  and  it  was  thrown  away  as  useless  for  any  purpose 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  475 

except  to  "  gravel  footwalks."  In  1806  William  Turnbull, 
of  Philadelphia,  floated  three  hundred  bushels  of  coal  from 
this  region  to  Philadelphia  in  an  ark  he  had  constructed  at 
Lausanne.  The  coal  was  sold  to  the  officers  of  the  Central 
Square  water  works,  but  it  proved  to  be  unmanageable,  and 
Mr.  Turnbull's  experiment  was  not  repeated. 

In  1814  two  ark-loads  of  Lehigh  coal  reached  Philadel- 
phia from  the  mines  of  the  Lehigh  Coal  Mine  Company,  then 
leased  by  the  Hon.  Charles  Miner  and  Jacob  Cist,  a  son  of 
Charles  Cist,  and  this  time  the  coal  was  sold  at  $21  a  ton 
and  successfully  used  by  the  purchasers,  Josiah  White  and 
Erskine  Hazard,  who  were  then  manufacturing  wire  at  the 
Falls  of  Schuylkill.  After  this  venture  Miner  and  Cist  aban- 
doned the  mining  of  anthracite  coal.  They  had  lost  money. 

In  1817  White  &  Hazard  and  George  F.  A.  Hauto  be- 
came interested  in  the  improvement  of  the  navigation  of  the 
Lehigh  river  for  the  purpose  of  aiding  in  the  development 
of  the  Lehigh  coal  mines,  and  on  the  20th  of  March,  1818, 
an  act  of  the  Pennsylvania  legislature  was  passed  authorizing 
the  incorporation  of  the  Lehigh  Coal  and  Navigation  Com- 
pany. This  company  obtained  a  lease  for  twenty  years  of 
the  Lehigh  Coal  Mine  Company's  lands,  then  amounting  to 
ten  thousand  acres,  for  one  ear  of  corn  a  year,  if  demanded ; 
with  the  proviso  that,  from  and  after  three  years,  the  latter 
company  should  send,  on  its  own  account,  at  least  40,000 
bushels  of  coal,  or  about  1,500  tons,  per  annum  to  Philadel- 
phia. The  new  company  commenced  work  immediately.  In 
1820  it  sent  365  tons  of  anthracite  coal  to  market ;  in  1821, 
1,073  tons ;  in  1822,  2,240  tons ;  in  1823,  5,823  tons ;  and  in 
1826  its  trade  increased  to  31,280  tons.  During  the  next 
year,  1827,  the  Mauch  Chunk  Railroad  was  finished  and  the 
improvement  of  the  ascending  navigation  was  put  under 
contract,  soon  after  which  shipments  steadily  increased. 

The  Middle  coal  region,  occupying  a  wild  and  broken 
section  of  country  between  the  Wyoming  and  Schuylkill  re- 
gions, and  extending  on  the  east  to  the  Lehigh  region,  was 
the  last  of  the  four  great  anthracite  coal  fields  of  Pennsyl- 
vania to  be  developed.  The  Mahanoy  and  Shamokin  basins 
compose  its  principal  divisions.  Coal  pits  or  mines  are  mark- 
ed in  the  neighborhood  of  Mahanoy  creek,  above  Crab  run, 


476  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

in  William  Scull's  map  of  Pennsylvania  in  1770.  But  little 
mining  was  done  in  the  region  until  1834,  owing  mainly  to 
its  inaccessibility.  In  that  year  500  tons  were  mined  and 
hauled  in  wagons  to  neighboring  districts. 

Down  to  1808  the  anthracite  coal  of  the  Wyoming  valley 
was  used  only  in  smiths'  forges,  but  in  that  year  Judge  Jesse 
Fell,  of  Wilkesbarre,  was  successful  in  using  it  in  a  grate,  as 
clearly  appears  from  a  memorandum  signed  with  his  name 
and  dated  February  11, 1808.  This  may  have  been  the  first 
successful  attempt  that  had  been  made  to  use  the  new  fuel 
for  domestic  purposes  in  a  grate  either  in  this  country  or 
in  any  other  country.  (Anthracite  coal  was  not  used  in 
Wales  until  1813,  nor  in  France  until  1814.)  Its  use  in 
grates  soon  became  general  wherever  it  was  mined  or  could 
be  transported.  "  In  the  year  1788,"  says  Judge  Fell,  "  I 
used  it  in  a  nailery,  and  found  it  to  be  profitable  in  that 
business.  The  nails  made  with  it  would  neat  the  weight  of 
the  rods,  and  frequently  a  balance  over."  It  is  claimed  by 
Dr.  T.  C.  James,  of  Philadelphia,  in  a  paper  read  before 
the  Historical  Society  of  Pennsylvania  on  April  19th,  1826, 
that  he  successfully  used  anthracite  coal  in  his  house  in  1804 
and  thenceforward.  Unfortunately  Dr.  James  does  not  say 
whether  he  used  the  coal  in  a  stove  or  a  grate. 

The  well-known  Blossburg  semi-bituminous  coal  region 
of  Pennsylvania  was  not  brought  into  public  notice  until 
after  1832,  in  which  year  it  was  geologically  surveyed  by 
Richard  Cowling  Taylor.  In  1840  its  development  began  by 
the  building  of  a  railroad  to  reach  northern  markets.  In 
that  year  4,235  tons  were  sent  to  market,  followed  by  25,- 
966  tons  in  1841.  The  Broad  Top  semi-bituminous  coal  re- 
gion of  Pennsylvania  was  but  very  slightly  developed  until 
1856,  when  the  Huntingdon  and  Broad  Top  Railroad  was 
completed  and  the  first  coal  was  sent  eastward  to  market. 

Anthracite  coal  of  inferior  quality  was  discovered  in 
Rhode  Island  and  Massachusetts  about  1760.  It  has  also 
been  discovered  in  Virginia,  Colorado,  and  New  Mexico. 

The  existence  of  coal  in  Alabama  was  first  noticed  in 
1834,  by  Dr.  Alexander  Jones,  of  Mobile. 

The  beginning  of  the  regular  manufacture  of  Connells- 
ville  coke,  which  is  widely  celebrated  for  its  excellence  as  a 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  477 

fuel  for  blast  furnaces,  dates  from  the  summer  of  1841,  when 
Provance  McCormick  and  James  Campbell  made  an  agree- 
ment with  John  Taylor  by  which  he  was  to  erect  two  ovens 
for  making  coke  on  his  farm  lying  on  the  Youghiogheny 
river,  near  Sedgwick  station,  a  few  miles  below  Connellsville, 
Pennsylvania.  The  ovens  were  built  of  the  bee-hive  pattern! 
After  repeated  failures  a  fair  quality  of  coke  was  produced 
in  the  winter  of  1841-2.  By  the  spring  of  1842  enough 
coke  had  been  made  to  load  two  boats,  each  of  which  was  90 
feet  long.  These  boats  were  built  by  McCormick  and  Camp- 
bell, who  were  carpenters.  Both  boats  were  taken  by  William 
Turner,  pilot,  down  the  Youghiogheny,  the  Monongahela,  and 
the  Ohio  to  Cincinnati,  where  purchasers  were  obtained  for 
the  coke  after  much  difficulty.  Others  embarked  in  1842  in 
the  manufacture  of  coke,  and  were  more  successful. 

About  1844  improved  ovens  were  introduced  in  the  Con- 
nellsville district  by  Colonel  A.  M.  Hill,  whose  energy  and 
success  gave  much  impetus  to  the  business  of  making  coke. 
In  1855  there  were  only  26  coke  ovens  at  work  in  the  dis- 
trict "  above  Pittsburgh,"  and  in  all  Western  Pennsylvania 
there  were  probably  less  than  a  hundred;  now  the  number 
of  ovens  in  the  Connellsville  district  alone  may  be  counted 
by  thousands,  most  of  them  built  after  improved  models. 
To-day  Connellsville  coke  is  extensively  used  in  the  blast 
furnaces  of  many  States,  its  use  for  this  purpose  extending 
to  the  Mississippi  valley,  while  it  is  used  as  far  west  as 
Utah  and  California  for  other  purposes.  Over  one-third  of 
the  annual  production  of  pig  iron  in  this  country  is  now 
made  with  this  fuel.  Its  use  as  a  furnace  fuel  properly 
dates  from  1860,  when  it  was  first  used  at  Pittsburgh  in  a 
furnace  owned  by  Graff,  Bennett  &  Co.,  and  known  as  Clin- 
ton furnace.  This  was  the  first  continuous  and  successful 
use  of  Connellsville  coke  in  a  blast  furnace.  This  coke  is 
free  from  sulphur,  but  contains  more  ash  than  the  celebrat- 
ed Durham  coke  of  England.  One  hundred  pounds  of  Con- 
nellsville coal  will  make  62j-  pounds  of  coke. 

The  shipments  of  Connellsville  coke  in  1890  amounted 
to  6,221,518  net  tons.  The  shipments  of  Pocahontas  Flat 
Top  coke,  from  Virginia  and  West  Virginia,  amounted  in  the 
same  year  to  433,319  net  tons. 


478 


THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


We  give  below  the  official  statistics  of  the  production 
of  coal  in  the  United  States  in  the  census  years  1870  and 
1880,  ending  on  the  31st  day  of  May  of  each  year,  and  in 
the  census  year  1889,  ending  on  the  31st  day  of  December. 


Years—  Gross  tons. 

Bituminous  coal. 

Anthracite  coal. 

Total. 

Census  year  1870                    ..  .. 

15  356  621 

13  985  960 

29  342  581 

Census  year  1880       

38  242  641 

25  580  189 

63  822  830 

Census  year  1889 

85,383  059 

40  714  720 

126  097  779 

The  production  of  bituminous  coal  in  the  nine  years 
and  seven  months  ending  with  December  31, 1889,  increased 
123  per  cent.,  while  the  production  of  anthracite  coal  in- 
creased 59  per  cent*  The  total  production  in  the  same  pe- 
riod increased  about  98  per  cent. 

The  following  table  gives  in  tons  of  2,000  pounds  the 
production  of  bituminous  and  anthracite  coal  in  the  United 
States  in  the  census  year  1889,  by  States  and  Territories. 


States  and  Territories. 

Production  in 
1889—  Net  tons. 

States  and  Territories. 

i  Production  in 

j  1889—  Net  tons. 

1 

Bituminous 

I  Ohio                    

9  976  787 

3  572  983 

Pennsylvania        

36,174,089 

279584 

Tennessee  

1,925,689 

184  179 

Texas  

128,216 

2  544  144 

Utah  

236,651 

Tllinrvi« 

19  104  ^72 

Virginia 

I            865  786 

2  845  057 

Washington  

1,030,578 

752  832 

West  Virginia  

6,231,880 

4  095  358 

Wyoming  

1,388,947 

1 

Kansas  and  Nebraska  

2,222,443 

Total  bituminous  

95,629,026 

Kentucky  

2,399,755 

Maryland 

2  939  715 

Anthracite. 

Michigan 

67  431 

Pennsylvania 

1       45  544  970 

Missouri 

2  557  823 

Colorado   New  Mexico  and 

Montana 

363  301 

Rhode  Island.          .    .  . 

.1              55,517 

New  Mexico  

486,463 

Total  anthracite  

;       45,600,487 

North  Carolina  and  Georgia.. 

226,156 

North  Dakota  

28,907 

Grand  total  

141,229,513 

For  the  facts  contained  in  this  chapter  we  are  indebt- 
ed to  many  sources  of  information,  but  we  have  been  most 
assisted  by  the  patient  researches  of  William  J.  Buck,  by  the 
exhaustive  work  of  Samuel  Harries  Daddow  and  Benjamin 
Bannan  on  Coal,  Iron,  and  Oil,  published  in  1866,  and  by 
the  valuable  Introduction  to  the  report  on  manufactures  ac- 
companying the  census  of  1860.  The  census  statistics  for 
1889  were  compiled  by  Mr.  John  H.  Jones,  special  agent. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  479 


CHAPTER  LV. 

BRITISH  EFFORTS  TO  PREVENT  THE  DEVELOPMENT 
OF  THE  AMERICAN  IRON  INDUSTRY. 

MANY  of  the  difficulties  encountered  in  the  early  devel- 
opment of  all  our  industries  were  inseparable  from  the  con- 
ditions which  attend  the  settlement  of  a  new  country,  but 
others  were  of  a  political  character,  and  grew  out  of  the 
dependent  relation  of  the  colonies  to  Great  Britain.  The 
first  Lord  Sheffield  declared  that  "the  only  use  and  advan- 
tage of  American  colonies  or  West  India  islands  is  the  monop- 
oly of  their  consumption  and  the  carriage  of  their  produce." 
McCulloch,  in  his  Commercial  Dictionary,  admits  that  it  was 
"  a  leading  principle  in  the  system  of  colonial  policy,  adopted 
as  well  by  England  as  by  the  other  European  nations,  to  dis- 
courage all  attempts  to  manufacture  such  articles  in  the  colo- 
nies as  could  be  provided  for  them  by  the  mother  country." 
Dr.  William  Elder,  in  his  Questions  of  the  Day,  says  :  "  The 
colonies  were  held  under  restraint  so  absolute  that,  beyond  the 
common  domestic  industries  and  the  most  ordinary  mechan- 
ical employments,  no  kind  of  manufactures  was  permitted." 
Bancroft,  in  his  History  of  the  United  States  of  America,  says 
that  "  England,  in  its  relations  with  other  States,  sought  a 
convenient  tariff ;  in  the  colonies  it  prohibited  industry."  He 
further  says :  "  The  British  nation  took  no  part  in  the  strifes 
between  the  governors  and  the  colonies;  but  they  were  jeal- 
ously alive  to  the  interests  of  their  own  commerce  and  manu- 
factures. That  the  British  creditor  might  be  secure  lands  in 
the  plantations  were,  by  act  of  Parliament,  made  liable  for 
debts.  Every  branch  of  consumption  was,  as  far  as  practica- 
ble, secured  to  English  manufacturers ;  every  form  of  compe- 
tition in  industry,  in  the  heart  of  the  plantations,  was  dis- 
couraged or  forbidden."  In  1750  appeared  the  celebrated  de- 
liverance of  a  prominent  Englishman,  Joshua  Gee,  in  which 
he  boldly  declared  that  the  British  people  "ought  always  to 
keep  a  watchful  eye  over  our  colonies,  to  restrain  them  from 
setting  up  any  of  the  manufactures  which  are  carried  on  in 


480  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Great  Britain,  and  any  such  attempts  should  be  crushed  in 
the  beginning,  for  if  they  are  suffered  to  grow  up  to  maturity 
it  will  be  difficult  to  suppress  them."  He  especially  recom- 
mended that  "  all  slitting  mills,  and  engines  for  drawing  wire 
or  weaving  stockings,  be  put  down."  Mathew  Carey,  in  his 
Essays  on  Political  Economy,  says  :  "  The  great  Chatham,  the 
least  hostile  to  British  America  of  British  ministers,  in  his 
speech  in  the  House  of  Lords,  on  the  address  to  the  throne, 
in  1770,  expressed  his  utmost  alarm  at  the  first  efforts  at 
manufactures  in  America."  Henry  C.  Carey  informs  us,  in 
his  Principles  of  Social  Science,  that  even  the  distinguished 
Lord  Chatham  "  declared  that  he  would  not  allow  the  colo- 
nists to  make  even  a  hobnail  for  themselves." 

A  law  of  Virginia,  to  encourage  textile  manufactures  in 
that  province,  passed  in  1684,  was  annulled  in  England.  In 
1699  the  exportation,  by  land  or  water,  of  wool  and  woolen 
manufactures  from  one  colony  to  another  was  prohibited. 
This  was  done  that  English  woolen  manufacturers  might 
have  a  monopoly  in  supplying  the  colonists  with  woolen 
goods.  From  1719  to  1732  British  merchants  "  complained  in 
memorials  to  the  government  that  the  people  of  Massachu- 
setts, New  York,  Connecticut,  Rhode  Island,  and  Maryland 
were  setting  up  manufactures  of  woolen  and  linen  for  the  use 
of  their  own  families,  and  of  flax  and  hemp  for  coarse  bags 
and  halters."  Bancroft  says:  "  In  the  land  of  furs  it  was 
found  that  hats  were  well  made  :  the  London  company  of 
hatters  remonstrated,  and  their  craft  was  protected  by  an  act 
forbidding  hats  to  be  transported  from  one  plantation  to  an- 
other." "  In  1732,"  says  Henry  C.  Carey,  in  his  great  work 
above  mentioned,  "  the  exportation  of  hats  from  province  to 
province  was  prohibited,  and  the  number  of  hatters'  appren- 
tices was  limited  by  law."  In  1750  a  hatter-shop  in  Massa- 
chusetts was  declared  by  the  British  Parliament  to  be  a  nui- 
sance. 

Concerning  the  attitude  of  Great  Britain  toward  the  wool- 
en manufactures  of  the  colonies  at  as  late  a  period  as  the 
beginning  of  the  Revolution  we  quote  from  Adam  Smith,  in 
his  Wealth  of  Nations,  published  in  1776  :  "  She  prohibits  the 
exportation  from  one  province  to  another  by  water,  and  even 
the  carriage  by  land  upon  horseback  or  in  a  cart,  of  hats,  of 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  481 

wools  and  woolen  goods,  of  the  produce  of  America ;  a  reg- 
ulation which  effectually  prevents  the  establishment  of  any 
manufacture  of  such  commodities  for  distant  sale,  and  con- 
fines the  industry  of  her  colonists  in  this  way  to  such  coarse 
and  household  manufactures  as  a  private  family  commonly 
makes  for  its  own  use,  or  for  that  of  some  of  its  neighbors 
in  the  same  province." 

In  the  seventeenth  century  the  colonial  iron  industry 
was  so  slowly  developed  that  it  attracted  but  little  attention 
in  Great  Britain;  but  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  Pennsylvania,  Maryland,  and  Virginia  began 
to  manufacture  iron  and  to  export  it  to  England,  the  possi- 
bilities of  its  development  in  competition  with  the  English 
iron  industry  became  a  source  of  uneasiness  to  English 
ironmasters.  In  the  following  passage  Bancroft  details  the 
results  of  this  apprehension. 

The  proprietors  of  English  iron. works  were  jealous  of  American  indus- 
try. In  1719  news  came  that,  in  some  parts  of  Massachusetts,  "  the  inhabit- 
ants worked  up  their  wool  and  flax,  and  made  a  coarse  sort  for  their  own  use ; 
that  they  manufactured  great  part  of  their  leather,  that  there  were  also  hat- 
ters in  the  maritime  towns ;  and  that  six  furnaces  and  nineteen  forges  were 
set  up  for  making  iron."  These  six  furnaces  and  nineteen  forges  were  a 
terror  to  England,  and  their  spectres  haunted  the  public  imagination  for 
a  quarter  of  a  century.  The  House  of  Commons  readily  resolved  that 
"  the  erecting  manufactories  in  the  colonies  tended  to  lessen  their  depend- 
ence ;"  and,  under  pretense  of  encouraging  the  importation  of  American  lum- 
ber, they  passed  a  bill  having  the  clause,  "that  none  in  the  plantations 
should  manufacture  iron  wares  of  any  kind  out  of  any  sows,  pigs,  or  bars 
whatsoever."  The  House  of  Lords  added,  "  that  no  forge,  going  by  water, 
or  other  works  should  be  erected  in  any  of  the  said  plantations,  for  the 
making,  working,  or  converting  of  any  sows,  pigs,  or  cast-iron  into  bar  or 
rod  iron."  The  opposition  of  the  northern  colonies  defeated  the  bill ;  Eng- 
land would  not  yet  forbid  the  colonists  to  manufacture  a  bolt  or  a  nail ;  but 
the  purpose  was  never  abandoned. 

The  distinguished  American  historian  records  in  the  fol- 
lowing language  the  culmination  of  the  repressive  policy  of 
the  mother  country  toward  the  iron  industry  of  the  colonies. 
"America  abounded  in  iron  ore;  its  unwrought  iron  was  ex- 
cluded by  a  duty  from  the  English  market;  and  its  people 
were  rapidly  gaining  skill  at  the  furnace  and  the  forge. 
In  February,  1750,  the  subject  engaged  the  attention  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  To  check  the  danger  of  American  rival- 
ry Charles  Townshend  was  placed  at  the  head  of  a  committee. 


482  THE   MANUFACTURE    OF 

After  a  few  days'  deliberation  he  brought  in  a  bill  which  per- 
mitted American  iron  in  its  rudest  forms  to  be  imported  duty 
free;  but,  now  that  the  nailers  in  the  colonies  could  afford 
spikes  and  large  nails  cheaper  than  the  English,  it  forbade 
the  smiths  of  America  to  erect  any  mill  for  slitting  or  rolling 
iron,  or  any  plating-forge  to  work  with  a  tilt-hammer,  or  any 
furnace  for  making  steel.  .  .  .  The  house  divided  on  the 
proposal  that  every  slitting  mill  in  America  should  be  abol- 
ished. The  clause  failed  only  by  a  majority  of  twenty-two ; 
but  an  immediate  return  was  required  of  every  mill  already 
existing,  and  the  number  was  never  to  be  increased."  The 
act  of  Parliament  to ^ which  Bancroft  here  alludes  contained 
many  provisions,  but  its  principal  provisions  were  as  follows. 

WHEREAS,  The  importation  of  bar  iron  from  His  Majesty's  colonies  in 
America  into  the  port  of  London,  and  the  importation  of  pig  iron  from  the 
said  colonies  into  any  port  of  Great  Britain,  and  the  manufacture  of  such 
bar  and  pig  iron  in  Great  Britain,  will  be  a  great  advantage,  not  only  to  the 
said  colonies,  but  also  to  this  kingdom,  by  furnishing  the  manufacturers  of 
iron  with  a  supply  of  that  useful  and  necessary  commodity,  and  by  means 
thereof  large  sums  of  money,  now  annually  paid  for  iron  to  foreigners,  will 
be  saved  to  this  kingdom,  and  a  greater  quantity  of  the  woolen,  and  other  man- 
ufactures of  Great  Britain,  will  be  exported  to  America,  in  exchange  for  such  iron 
so  imported;  be  it  therefore  enacted  by  the  King's  most  excellent  majesty, 
by  and  with  the  advice  and  consent  of  the  Lords,  spiritual  and  temporal, 
and  Commons,  in  this  present  Parliament  assembled,  and  by  the  authority 
of  the  same,  that  from  and  after  the  twenty-fourth  day  of  June,  one  thou- 
sand seven  hundred  and  fifty,  the  several  and  respective  subsidies,  customs, 
impositions,  rates,  and  duties,  now  payable  on  pig  iron,  made  in  and  import- 
ed from  His  Majesty's  colonies  in  America  into  any  port  of  Great  Britain, 
shall  cease,  determine,  and  be  no  longer  paid ;  and  that  from  and  after  the 
said  twenty -fourth  day  of  June  no  subsidy,  custom,  imposition,  rate,  or  duty 
whatever  shall  be  payable  upon  bar  iron  made  in  and  imported  from  the 
said  colonies  into  the  port  of  London ;  any  law,  statute,  or  usage  to  the  con- 
trary thereof  in  any  wise  notwithstanding. 

And,  that  pig  and  bar  iron  made  in  His  Majesty's  colonies  in  America 
may  be  further  manufactured  in  this  kingdom,  be  it  further  enacted  by  the 
authority  aforesaid,  that  from  and  after  the  twenty-fourth  day  of  June,  one 
thousand  seven  hundred  and  fifty,  no  mill  or  other  engine  for  slitting  or 
rolling  of  iron,  or  any  plateing  forge  to  work  with  a  tilt  hammer,  or  any  fur- 
nace for  making  steel,  shall  be  erected,  or  after  such  erection  continued  in 
any  of  His  Majesty's  colonies  in  America ;  and  if  any  person  or  persons 
shall  erect,  or  cause  to  be  erected,  or  after  such  erection  continue,  or  cause 
to  be  continued,  in  any  of  the  said  colonies,  any  such  mill,  engine,  forge,  or 
furnace,  every  person  or  persons  so  offending  shall,  for  every  such  mill,  en- 
gine, forge,  or  furnace,  forfeit  the  sum  of  two  hundred  pounds  of  lawful 
money  of  Great  Britain. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  483 

And  it  is  hereby  further  enacted  by  the  authority  aforesaid,  that  every 
such  mill,  engine,  forge,  or  furnace,  so  erected  or  continued,  contrary  to  the 
directions  of  this  act,  shall  be  deemed  a  common  nuisance,  and  that  every  gov- 
ernor, lieutenant-governor,  or  commander-in-chief  of  any  of  His  Majesty's 
colonies  in  America,  where  any  such  mill,  engine,  forge,  or  furnace  shall 
be  erected  or  continued,  shall,  upon  information  to  him  made  and  given, 
upon  the  oath  of  any  two  or  more  credible  witnesses,  that  any  such  mill, 
engine,  forge,  or  furnace  hath  been  so  erected  or  continued,  (which  oath 
such  governor,  lieutenant-governor,  or  commander-in-chief,  is  hereby  au- 
thorized and  required  to  administer,)  order  and  cause  every  such  mill,  en- 
gine, forge,  or  furnace  to  be  abated  within  the  space  of  thirty  days  next 
after  such  information  given  and  made  as  aforesaid. 

The  provision  in  the  above  act  which  repealed  the  du- 
ties on  colonial  pig  iron  and  bar  iron  imported  into  Great 
Britain  was  wholly  based  on  the  necessities  of  the  mother 
country,  and  was  not  in  the  least  due  to  a  desire  to  build  up 
a  colonial  iron  industry  for  the  benefit  of  the  colonies  them- 
selves. There  was  in  1750  a  scarcity  of  wood  in  England  for 
the  supply  of  charcoal,  which  was  then  the  principal  fuel 
used  in  the  smelting  and  refining  of  iron,  but  forests  every- 
where abounded  in  the  colonies  and  iron  ore  had  been  found 
in  many  places.  The  manufacture  of  pig  iron  and  bar  iron 
in  the  colonies,  and  their  exportation  to  England,  to  meet  a 
scarcity  of  the  domestic  supply  of  these  raw  products,  and  to 
be  exchanged  for  British  woolen  and  other  manufactures,  was 
therefore  encouraged.  The  provision  relating  to  articles  made 
from  pig  iron  and  bar  iron  was  intended  to  be  prohibitory 
of  their  manufacture  in  the  colonies.  Adam  Smith  thus  de- 
scribed in  1776  the  character  of  this  legislation,  which  had  not 
been  repealed  nor  altered  down  to  that  period,  the  beginning 
of  the  Revolution :  "  While  Great  Britain  encourages  in  Amer- 
ica the  manufactures  of  pig  and  bar  iron,  by  exempting  them 
from  duties  to  which  the  like  commodities  are  subject  when 
imported  from  any  other  country,  she  imposes  an  absolute 
prohibition  upon  the  erection  of  steel  furnaces  and  slit-mills 
in  any  of  her  American  plantations.  She  will  not  suffer  her 
colonists  to  work  in  those  more  refined  manufactures  even  for 
their  own  consumption,  but  insists  upon  their  purchasing  of 
her  merchants  and  manufacturers  all  goods  of  this  kind 
which  they  have  occasion  for." 

Bancroft  comments  as  follows  upon  the  reception  which 
was  given  in  England  to  the  new  law. 


484  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

While  England  applauded  the  restriction,  its  owners  of  iron  mines 
grudged  to  America  a  share  of  the  market  for  the  rough  material ;  the  tan- 
ners, from  the  threatened  inaction  of  the  English  furnaces,  feared  a  dimin- 
ished supply  of  bark ;  the  clergy  and  gentry  foreboded  injury  to  the  price 
of  woodlands.  The  importation  of  bar  iron  from  the  colonies  was  therefore 
limited  to  the  port  of  London,  which  already  had  its  supply  from  abroad.  The 
ironmongers  and  smiths  of  Birmingham  thought  well  of  importing  bars  of 
iron  free ;  but,  from  "  compassion  "  to  the  "  many  thousand  families  in  the 
kingdom  "  who  otherwise  "  must  be  ruined,"  they  prayed  that  "  the  Ameri- 
can people  "  might  be  subject  not  to  the  proposed  restrictions  only,  but  to 
such  others  "  as  may  secure  for  ever  the  trade  to  this  country."  Some  would 
have  admitted  the  raw  material  from  no  colony  where  its  minute  manufact- 
ure was  carried  on. 

The  act  of  1750  was  generally  enforced  in  the  colonies, 
and  the  further  erection  of  slitting  and  rolling  mills,  plating 
forges,  and  steel  furnaces  was  prevented.  Works  of  the  char- 
acter described  which  had  been  erected  previous  to  the  pas- 
sage of  the  act  could  not,  however,  be  legally  prevented  from 
continuing  in  operation.  The  governors  of  the  several  colo- 
nies issued  proclamations  commanding  obedience  to  the  re- 
quirements of  the  new  law.  The  proclamation  of  lieutenant- 
governor  James  Hamilton,  of  Pennsylvania,  was  printed  by 
Benjamin  Franklin.  An  original  copy  may  be  seen  in  the 
library  of  the  Pennsylvania  Historical  Society  in  Philadel- 
phia. It  reads  as  follows. 

By  the  Honourable  JAMES  HAMILTON,  ESQ.,  Lieutenant-Governor  and 
Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Province  of  Pennsylvania  and  Counties  of 
New  Castle,  Kent,  and  Sussex,  on  Delaware. 

A  PROCLAMATION. 

WHEREAS,  By  an  act  of  Parliament  passed  in  the  twenty-third  year  of 
His  Majesty's  reign,  entituled  "  An  act  to  encourage  the  importation  of  pig 
and  bar  iron  from  His  Majesty's  colonies  in  America,  and  to  prevent  the 
erection  of  any  mill,  or  other  engine,  for  slitting  or  rolling  of  iron,  or  any 
plating-forge  to  work  with  a  tilt-hammer,  or  any  furnace  for  making  steel 
in  any  of  the  said  colonies,"  it  is  enacted — "  That  from  and  after  the  twen- 
ty-fourth day  of  June,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  one  thousand  seven  hundred 
and  fifty,  every  governor,  lieutenant-governor,  and  commander-in-chief  of 
any  of  His  Majesty's  colonies  in  America  shall  forthwith  transmit  to  the 
commissioners  for  trade  and  plantations  a  certificate,  under  his  hand  and 
seal  of  office,  containing  a  particular  account  of  every  mill  or  engine  for 
slitting  and  rolling  of  iron,  and  every  plating-forge  to  work  with  a  tilt-ham- 
mer, and  every  furnace  for  making  steel,  at  the  time  of  the  commencement 
of  this  act,  erected  in  his  colony ;  expressing,  also,  in  the  said  certificate, 
such  of  them  as  are  used,  and  the  name  or  names  of  the  proprietor  or  pro- 
prietors of  each  such  mill,  engine,  forge,  and  furnace,  and  the  place  where 
each  such  mill,  engine,  forge,  and  furnace  is  erected,  and  the  number  of 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  485 

engines,  forges,  and  furnaces  in  the  said  colony."  To  the  end  therefore  that 
I  may  be  the  better  enabled  to  obey  the  directions  of  the  said  act,  I  have 
thought  fit,  with  the  advice  of  the  council,  to  issue  this  proclamation,  here- 
by enjoining  and  requiring  the  proprietor  or  proprietors,  or  in  case  of  their 
absence,  the  occupiers  of  any  of  the  above-mentioned  mills,  engines,  forges, 
and  furnaces,  erected  within  this  province,  to  appear  before  me,  at  the  city 
of  Philadelphia,  on  or  before  the  twenty-first  day  of  September  next,  with 
proper  and  ample  testimonials  of  the  rights  of  such  proprietor,  proprietors, 
and  occupiers  therein,  and  sufficient  proofs  whether  the  said  mills,  engines, 
forges,  and  furnaces  respectively  were  used  on  the  said  twenty-fourth  day 
of  June  or  not :  And  I  do  further  hereby  require  and  command  the  sheriff1 
of  every  county  in  this  province  respectively,  on  or  before  the  said  twenty - 
first  day  of  September,  to  appear  before  me,  at  the  city  of  Philadelphia 
aforesaid,  and  then  and  there  by  writings,  under  their  hands  and  seals,  to 
certify  and  make  known  to  'me  every  mill  or  engine  for  slitting  and  rolling 
of  iron,  every  plating-forge  to  work  with  a  tilt-hammer,  and  every  furnace 
for  making  steel,  which  were  erected  within  their  several  and  respective 
counties  on  the  said  twenty-fourth  day  of  June,  and  the  place  and  places 
where  the  same  were  erected,  with  the  names  of  their  reputed  proprietor 
or  proprietors,  and  the  occupiers  of  them,  and  every  of  them ;  and  whether 
they  or  any  of  them  were  used  on  the  said  twenty-fourth  day  of  June  or 
not,  as  they  and  each  of  them  will  answer  the  contrary  at  their  peril. 

Given  under  my  hand  and  the  great  seal  of  the  province  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, at  Philadelphia,  this  sixteenth  day  of  August,  in  the  twenty-fourth 
year  of  the  reign  of  our  Sovereign  Lord,  GEORGE  the  Second,  King  of  Great 
Britain,  France,  and  Ireland,  etc.,  and  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  1750. 

By  His  Honour's  command.  JAMES  HAMILTON. 

EICHARD  PETERS,  Secretary. 

GOD  Save  the  KING. 

PHILADELPHIA:    Printed  by  B.  FRANKLIN,  Printer  to  the  Provin6e,  MDCCL.        v 

As  may  easily  be  imagined  the  passage  of  this  act  arous-\ 
ed  anew  the  feeling  of  discontent  in  the  colonies  which  had 
been  created  and  kept  alive  by  many  repressive  measures  of 
the  mother  country  directed  against  our  colonial  manufact- 
ures. These  measures  of  repression  formed  a  large  part  of 
that  "  long  train  of  abuses  and  usurpations  "  which  led  to  the 
war  of  independence. 

From  the  passage  of  the  act  of  1750  down  to  the  Revo- 
lution our  iron  industry  was  mainly  confined  to  the  produc- 
tion of  pig  iron  and  bar  iron  and  castings  from  the  blast  fur- 
nace. The  effect  of  this  act  was  to  repress  the  development 
of  our  steel  industry  and  of  the  finished  branches  of  our 
iron  industry.  During  this  period  we  made  pig  iron  and  bar 
iron  in  sufficient  quantities  for  our  own  use  and  the  surplus 
was  sent  to  the  mother  country. 


486  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

But  the  colonies  suffered  also  from  the  general  restrictive 
policy  of  Great  Britain  affecting  the  manufactures  of  all  for- 
eign countries,  particularly  from  its  numerous  acts  of  Parlia- 
ment prohibiting  the  exportation  of  skilled  artisans  and  im- 
proved machinery:  Adam  Smith  gives  us  these  facts. 

By  the  7th  and  8th  of  William  III.  [1696  and  1697],  chapter  20,  section 
8,  the  exportation  of  frames  or  engines  for  knitting  gloves  or  stockings  is 
prohibited  under  the  penalty  not  only  of  the  forfeiture  of  such  frames  or 
engines  so  exported,  or  attempted  to  be  exported,  but  of  forty  pounds — 
one-half  to  the  king,  the  other  to  the  person  who  shall  inform  or  sue  for 
the  same. 

By  the  5th  George  I.  [1718],  chapter  27,  the  person  who  shall  be  con- 
victed of  enticing  any  artificer  of,  or  in  any  of  the  manufactures  of,  Great 
Britain,  to  go  into  any  foreign  parts  in  order  to  practice  or  teach  his  trade, 
is  liable,  for  the  first  offense,  to  be  fined  in  any  sum  not  exceeding  one  hun- 
dred pounds,  and  to  three  months'  imprisonment,  and  until  the  fine  shall 
be  paid ;  and,  for  the  second  offense,  to  be  fined  in  any  sum  at  the  discre- 
tion of  the  court,  and  to  imprisonment  for  twelve  months,  and  until  the 
fine  shall  be  paid.  By  the  23d  George  II.  [1749],  chapter  13,  this  penalty 
is  increased,  for  the  first  offense,  to  five  hundred  pounds  for  every  artificer 
so  enticed,  and  to  twelve  months'  imprisonment,  and  until  the  fine  shall 
be  paid;  and,  for  the  second  offense,  to  one  thousand  pounds,  and  to  two 
years'  imprisonment,  and  until  the  fine  shall  be  paid. 

By  the  former  of  these  two  statutes,  upon  proof  that  any  person  has 
been  enticing  any  artificer,  or  that  any  artificer  has  promised  or  contracted 
to  go  into  foreign  parts  for  the  purposes  aforesaid,  such  artificer  may  be 
obliged  to  give  security  at  the  discretion  of  the  court  that  he  shall  not  go 
beyond  the  seas,  and  may  be  committed  to  prison  until  he  give  such  se- 
curity. 

If  any  artificer  has  gone  beyond  the  seas,  and  is  exercising  or  teaching 
his  trade  in  any  foreign  country,  upon  warning  being  given  to  him  by  any 
of  his  majesty's  ministers  or  consuls  abroad,  or  by  one  of  his  majesty's  sec- 
retaries of  state  for  the  time  being,  if  he  does  not  within  six  months  after 
such  warning  return  to  this  realm,  and  from  thenceforth  abide  and  inhabit 
continually  within  the  same,  he  is  from  thenceforth  declared  incapable  of 
taking  any  legacy  devised  to  him  within  this  kingdom,  or  of  being  exec- 
utor or  administrator  to  any  person,  or  of  taking  any  lands  within  this 
kingdom  by  descent,  devise,  or  purchase.  He  likewise  forfeits  to  the  king 
all  his  lands,  goods,  and  chattels,  is  declared  an  alien  in  every  respect,  and 
is  put  out  of  the  king's  protection. 

Sir  William  Blackstone,  in  the  chapter  on  offenses  against 
public  trade,  in  his  Commentaries  on  the  Laivs  of  England,  re- 
cites some  of  the  details  above  given  by  Adam  Smith,  and 
adds  important  testimony  to  the  character  of  the  restrictive 
legislation  adopted  by  Great  Britain  in  1774,  during  the  long 
reign  of  George  the  Third.  He  says : 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  487 

To  prevent  the  destruction  of  our  home  manufactures  by  transporting  and  se- 
ducing our  artists  to  settle  abroad,  it  is  provided,  by  statute  5  George  I.,  c.  27, 
that  such  as  so  entice  or  seduce  them  shall  be  fined  £100  and  be  imprison- 
ed three  months ;  and  for  the  second  offense  shall  be  fined  at  discretion, 
and  be  imprisoned  a  year ;  and  the  artificers  so  going  into  foreign  countries, 
and  not  returning  within  six  months  after  warning  given  them  by  the  Brit- 
ish ambassador  where  they  reside,  shall  be  deemed  aliens,  and  forfeit  all 
their  land  and  goods,  and  shall  be  incapable  of  any  legacy  or  gift.  By  stat- 
ute 23  George  II.,  c.  13,  the  seducers  incur,  for  the  first  offense,  a  forfeiture 
of  £500  for  each  artificer  contracted  with  to  be  sent  abroad,  and  imprison- 
ment for  twelve  months ;  and  for  the  second,  £1000,  and  are  liable  to  two 
years'  imprisonment;  and,  by  the  same  statute,  connected  with  14  George 
III.,  c.  71,  if  any  person  exports  any  tools  or  utensils  used  in  the  silk,  linen, 
cotton,  or  woolen  manufactures  (excepting  wool  cards  to  North  America), 
he  forfeits  the  same  and  £200,  and  the  captain  of  the  ship  (having  knowl- 
edge thereof)  £100 ;  and  if  any  captain  of  a  king's  ship,  or  officer  of  the 
customs,  knowingly  suffers  such  exportation  he  forfeits  £100  and  his  em- 
ployment, and  is  forever  made  incapable  of  bearing  any  public  office ;  and 
every  person  collecting  such  tools  or  utensils  in  order  to  export  the  s&me 
shall,  on  conviction  at  the  assizes,  forfeit  such  tools  and  also  £200. 

The  policy  which  is  epitomized  above  by  the  great  Eng- 
lish political  economist  and  the  great  English  commentator 
was  continued  throughout  the  Revolution  and  long  after  the 
colonies  secured  their  independence.  The  details  of  British 
legislation  at  this  period  are  worthy  of  preservation. 

The  following  summary  of  the  provisions  of  various  re- 
strictive acts  of  Parliament  enacted  in  1781,  1782,  1785,  and 
1795  is  derived  from  Pope's  Laws  of  the  Customs  and  Excise. 

(1781.)  It  was  enacted  (21  Geo.  III.,  c.  37)  that  any  person  who  packed 
or  put  on  board,  or  caused  to  be  brought  to  any  place  in  order  to  be  put  on 
board  any  vessel,  with  a  view  to  exportation,  "any  machine,  engine,  tool, 
press,  paper,  utensil,  or  implement,  or  any  part  thereof,  which  now  is  or 
hereafter  may  be  used  in  the  woolen,  cotton,  linen,  or  silk  manufacture  of 
this  kingdom,  or  goods  wherein  wool,  cotton,  linen,  or  silk  are  used,  or  any 
model  or  plan  thereof,"  etc.,  should  forfeit  every  such  machine  and  the 
goods  packed  therewith  and  £200,  and  suffer  imprisonment  for  twelve 
months.  The  like  penalties  attached  to  having  in  custody  or  power,  or 
collecting,  making,  applying  for,  or  causing  to  be  made,  any  such  machin- 
ery, and  the  forfeitures  were  to  go  to  the  use  of  the  informer  after  the  ex- 
penses of  prosecution  were  paid.  The  exportation,  and  the  attempt  to  put 
on  board  for  that  purpose,  of  "any  blocks,  plates,  engines,  tools,  or  utensils 
used  in,  or  which  are  proper  for  the  preparing  or  finishing  of,  the  calico, 
cotton,  muslin,  or  linen  printing  manufactures,  or  any  part  thereof,"  were 
the  next  year  (1782)  prohibited  under  penalty  of  £500.  The  same  act  in- 
terdicted the  transportation  of  tools  used  in  the  iron  and  steel  manufact- 

(1785.)    The  great  improvements  which  had  been  made  in  England  in 


488  |  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

all  branches  of  the  iron  manufacture,  and  the  competition  springing  up  in 
Europe  and  America  in  the  production  of  raw  iron,  doubtless  prompted  the 
act  of  1785  (25  Geo.  III.,  c.  67)  to  prevent,  under  severe  penalties,  the  en- 
ticing of  artificers  or  workmen  in  the  iron  and  steel  manufactures  out  of 
the  kingdom,  and  the  exportation  of  any  tools  used  in  these  branches  to 
any  place  beyond  the  seas. 

(1795.)  The  act  of  Parliament  of  1785,  prohibiting  the  exportation  of 
tools  and  machinery  used  in  the  iron  and  steel  manufactures,  was  made 
perpetual  by  the  statute  35  Geo.  III.,  c.  38.  It  recapitulates  the  several  de- 
scriptions of  machine's,  engines,  implements,  utensils,  and  models,  or  parts 
thereof,  employed  in  rolling,  slitting,  pressing,  casting,  boring,  stamping, 
piercing,  scoring,  shading,  or  chasing  and  die-sinking  iron  and  other  metals. 
It  included  machines  used  in  the  button,  glass,  pottery,  saddle  and  harness, 
and  other  manufactures,  wire  moulds  for  paper,  etc. 

We  copy  below  the  leading  provisions  of  the  act  of  the 
British  Parliament,  (chapter  37,)  adopted  in  1781,  the  twenty- 
first  year  of  the  reign  of  George  the  Third,  which  prohibited 
the  exportation  from  Great  Britain  of  machinery  used  in  the 
manufacture  of  cotton,  linen,  woolen,  and  silk  goods. 

An  act  to  explain  and  amend  an  act  made  in  the  fourteenth  year  of 
the  reign  of  his  present  Majesty,  intituled,  An  Act  to  prevent  the  exporta- 
tion to  foreign  parts  of  utensils  made  use  of  in  the  cotton,  linen,  woollen, 
and  silk  manufactures  of  this  kingdom,  .  .  .  That  if,  at  any  time  after  the 
twenty-fourth  day  of  June,  one  thousand  seven  hundred  and  eighty-one, 
any  person  or  persons  in  Great  Britain  or  Ireland  shall  .  .  .  put  on  board 
of  any  ship  or  vessel,  which  shall  not  be  bound  directly  to  some  port  or 
place  in  Great  Britain  or  Ireland,  .  .  .  any  machine,  engine,  tool,  press, 
paper,  utensil,  or  implement  whatsoever,  which  now  is,  or  at  any  time  or 
times  hereafter  shall  or  may  be  used  in,  or  proper  for  the  preparing,  work- 
ing, pressing,  finishing,  or  completing,  of  the  woollen,  cotton,  linen,  or 
silk  manufactures  of  this  kingdom  .  .  .  ;  or  any  model  or  plan,  or 
models  or  plans,  of  any  such  machine,  engine,  tool,  press,  paper,  utensil, 
or  implement,  or  any  part  or  parts  thereof,  .  .  .  the  person  or  persons 
so  offending  shall,  for  every  such  offence,  not  only  forfeit  all  such  ma- 
chines, engines,  tools,  press,  paper,  utensils,  or  implements,  models  or 
plans,  or  parts  thereof  respectively,  together  with  the  packages,  and  all 
other  goods  packed  therewith,  if  any  such  there  be,  but  also  the  sum  of 
two  hundred  pounds  of  lawful  money  of  Great  Britain ;  and  shall  also  suf- 
fer imprisonment  .  .  .  for  the  space  of  twelve  months,  without  bail  or 
mainprize,  and  until  such  forfeiture  shall  be  paid. 

The  act  of  1785,  in  the  twenty-fifth  year  of  the  reign  of 
George  the  Third,  a  little  over  one  hundred  years  ago,  was 
undisguisedly  passed  to  cripple  if  possible  the  iron  industries 
of  foreign  countries.  Its  principal  provisions  were  as  follows. 

An  act  to  prohibit  the  exportation  to  foreign  parts  of  tools  and  utensils 
made  use  of  in  the  iron  and  steel  manufactures  of  this  kingdom  ;  and  to 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  489 

prevent  the  seducing  of  artificers  or  workmen,  employed  in  those  manufact- 
ures, to  go  into  parts  beyond  the  seas. 

Whereas,  the  exportation  of  the  several  tools  and  utensils  made  use  of 
in  preparing,  working  up,  and  finishing  the  iron  and  steel  manufactures  of 
this  kingdom,  or  either  of  them,  will  enable  foreigners  to  work  up  such 
manufactures,  and  thereby  greatly  diminish  the  exportation  of  the  same 
from  this  kingdom;  therefore,  for  the  preserving,  as  much  as  possible,  to 
His  Majesty's  subjects  the  benefits  arising  from  those  great  and  valuable 
branches  of  trade  and  commerce,  be  it  enacted,  that  if,  at  any  time,  after 
the  first  day  of  August,  one  thousand  seven  hundred  and  eighty-five,  any 
person  or  persons  in  Great  Britain  shall,  upon  any  pretence  whatsoever,  ex- 
port, load,  or  put  on  board,  or  pack,  or  cause  or  procure  to  be  loaden,  put  on 
board,  or  packed,  in  order  to  be  loaded  or  put  on  board  of  any  ship  or  ves- 
sel which  shall  be  bound  to  some  port  or  place  in  parts  beyond  the  seas 
(except  to  Ireland),  or  shall  lade,  or  cause  or  procure  to  be  laden,  on  board 
any  boat  or  other  vessel,  or  shall  bring,  or  cause  to  be  brought,  to  any  quay, 
wharf,  or  other  place,  in  order  to  be  so  laden  or  put  on  board  any  such  ship 
or  vessel,  any  tool  or  utensil  hereafter  mentioned;  that  is  to  say,  hand 
stamps,  dog  head  stamps,  pulley  stamps,  stamps  of  all  sorts,  hammers  and 
anvils  for  stamps,  screws  for  stamps,  iron  rods  for  stamps,  presses  of  all 
sorts,  in  iron,  steel,  or  other  metal,  which  are  used  for  giving  impressions 
to  metal,  or  any  parts  of  these  several  articles ;  presses  of  all  sorts  called 
cutting-out  presses,  beds  and  punches  to  be  used  therewith  ;  piercing  presses 
of  all  sorts,  beds  and  punches  to  be  used  therewith,  either  in  parts  or  pieces, 
or  fitted  together ;  iron  or  steel  dies  to  be  used  in  stamps  or  presses  either 
with  or  without  impressions  on  them ;  rollers  of  cast  iron,  wrought  iron,  or 
steel,  for  rolling  of  metal,  and  frames  for  the  same;  flasks  or  casting  moulds, 
and  boards  used  therewith ;  lathes  of  all  sorts  for  turning,  burnishing,  pol- 
ishing, either  the  whole  together,  or  separate  parts  thereof;  lathe  strings, 
polishing  brushes,  scoring  or  shading  engines,  presses  for  horn  buttons,  dies 
for  horn  buttons,  sheers  for  cutting  of  metal,  rolled  steel,  rolled  metal,  with 
silver  thereon,  parts  of  buttons  not  fitted  up  into  buttons,  or  in  an  unfinish- 
ed state ;  engines  for  chafing,  stocks  for  casting  buckles,  buttons,  and  rings ; 
cast-iron  anvils  and  hammers  for  forging  mills  for  iron  and  copper;  roles,  slit- 
ters, beds,  pillars,  and  frames  for  slitting  mills;  die-sinking  tools  of  all  sorts, 
engines  for  making  button  shanks,  laps  of  all  sorts,  drilling  engines,  tools 
for  pinching  of  glass,  engines  for  covering  of  whips,  polishing  brushes,  bars 
of  metal  covered  with  gold  or  silver,  iron  or  steel  screw  plates,  pins,  and  stock* 
for  making  screws,  or  any  other  tool  or  utensil  whatsoever,  which  now  is,  are, 
or  at  any  time  or  times  hereafter  shall  or  may  be  used  in,  or  proper  for  the 
preparing,  working,  finishing,  or  completing  of  the  iron  or  steel  manufact- 
ures of  this  kingdom,  or  either  of  them,  by  what  name  or  names  soever 
the  same  shall  be  called  or  known,  or  any  model  or  plan,  or  models  or  plans, 
of  any  such  tool,  utensil,  or  implement,  or  any  part  or  parts  thereof;  the 
person  or  persons  so  offending  shall  for  every  such  offence  not  only  forfeit 
and  lose  all  such  tools  or  utensils,  or  parts  or  parcels  thereof,  together  with 
the  packages,  and  all  other  goods  packed  therewith,  if  any  such  there  be, 
the  person  or  persons  so  offending  shall,  for  every  such  oflence,  for- 
feit the  sum  of  two  hundred  pounds  of  lawful  money  of  Great  Britain,  and 
shall  also  suffer  imprisonment,  in  the  common  gaol,  prison,  or  house  of  cor- 


490  THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 

rection,    .    .    .    for  the  space  of  twelve  months,  without  bail  or  mainprize, 
and  until  such  forfeiture  shall  be  paid. 

And  whereas,  for  the  encouragement  of  such  manufactories  in  this  kingdom, 
it  is  necessary  that  provision  should  be  made  to  prevent  artificers,  and  others  em- 
ployed therein,  from  departing,  or  from  being  seduced  to  depart  out  of  this  king- 
dom ;  be  it  therefore  enacted  by  the  authority  aforesaid,  that  from  and  after 
the  said  first  day  of  August,  one  thousand  seven  hundred  and  eighty-five,  if 
any  person  or  persons  shall  contract  with,  entice,  persuade,  or  endeavor  to 
seduce  or  encourage  any  artificer  or  workman  concerned  or  employed,  or 
who  shall  have  worked  at,  or  been  employed  in,  the  iron  or  steel  manufact- 
ures in  this  kingdom,  or  in  making  or  preparing  any  tools  or  utensils  for 
such  manufactory,  to  go  out  of  Great  Britain  to  any  parts  beyond  the  seas 
(except  to  Ireland),  and  shall  be  convicted  thereof  .  .  .  shall,  for  every 
artificer  so  contracted  with,  enticed,  persuaded,  encouraged,  or  seduced,  or 
attempted  so  to  be,  forfeit  and  pay  the  sum  of  five  hundred  pounds  of  law- 
ful money  of  Great  Britain,  and  shall  be  committed  to  the  common  gaol, 
.  .  .  there  to  remain  without  bail  or  mainprize  for  the  space  of  twelve 
calendar  months,  and  until  such  forfeiture  shall  be  paid;  and  in  case  of  a 
subsequent  offence  of  the  same  kind  the  person  or  persons  so  again  offend- 
ing shall,  upon  the  like  conviction,  forfeit  and  pay,  for  every  person  so  con- 
tracted with,  enticed,  persuaded,  encouraged,  or  seduced,  or  attempted  so  to 
be,  the  sum  of  one  thousand  pounds,  .  .  .  and  shall  be  committed  to  the 
common  gaol  as  aforesaid,  there  to  remain,  without  bail  or  mainprize,  for 
and  during  the  term  of  two  years,  and  until  such  forfeitures  shall  be  paid. 

In  1786  some  trifling  changes  were  made  in  the  list  of  ar- 
ticles the  exportation  of  which  was  prohibited,  but  the  prin- 
cipal tools  used  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  and  steel  were 
carefully  preserved  in  this  list.  At  the  same  time  tools  for 
making  paper,  for  making  and  working  glass,  and  for  mak- 
ing pottery  and  harness  were  added  to  the  list.  In  1795,  as 
already  stated,  the  act  of  1785  was  made  perpetual.  In  1799 
an  act  was  passed  providing  that,  "  Whereas,  there  have  of 
late  been  many  attempts  to  seduce  colliers  out  of  Scotland 
into  foreign  countries,  be  it  therefore  further  enacted  that  all 
persons  seducing,  or  attempting  to  seduce,  colliers  .  .  .  from 
the  kingdom  of  Great  Britain  shall  be  punished  in  the  same 
manner  as  persons  seducing,  or  attempting  to  seduce,  manu- 
facturers or  other  artisans  are  punishable  by  law."  This  last 
act  would  have  a  tendency  to  prevent  the  mining  of  coal  in 
the  United  States,  which  had  scarcely  been  commenced  at  the 
time  of  its  passage. 

The  prohibition  of  the  exportation  of  machinery  for  the 
manufacture  of  iron  and  steel  and  of  other  machinery  contin- 
ued until  long  after  the  beginning  of  the  present  century. 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  491 

In  1825  and  again  in  1833  the  exportation  of  machinery 
for  the  manufacture  of  cotton,  woolen,  linen,  and  silk  goods 
was  again  prohibited.  It  was  not  permitted  to  be  exported 
until  1845.  In  the  London  Times  for  October  30,  1811,  will 
be  found  a  detailed  account  of  the  arrest  of  Hugh  Wagstaff 
for  placing  on  board  the  American  ship  Mount  Vernon, 
bound  to  New  York,  twenty- three  boxes  containing  spindles 
used  in  the  spinning  of  cotton.  Wagstaff  was  committed  to 
Lancaster  Castle  for  trial  under  the  act  of  21  Geo.  III.,  chap- 
ter 37,  and  the  boxes  were  seized.  The  Hon.  John  L.  Hayes, 
of  Boston,  the  highest  authority  in  the  United  States  upon 
the  literature  of  our  textile  industries,  informs  us  that  "the 
patriotic  Tench  Coxe,  the  able  coadjutor  of  Alexander  Ham- 
ilton in  the  Treasury,  entered  into  a  bond  with  a  person  in 
London  who  engaged  to  send  him  complete  models  of  Ark- 
wright's  patents.  The  models  were  completed  and  packed, 
but  were  detected  and  forfeited."  In  1832  the  model  of  a  roll- 
er for  calico  printing,  to  be  used  at  Lowell,  in  Massachusetts, 
could  be  obtained  from  England  only  by  concealing  it  in  the 
trunk  of  a  lady  who  was  returning  to  this  country.  From 
a  letter  in  the  possession  of  Dr.  Hayes  it  appears  that  when, 
in  1839,  Messrs.  Sharp  &  Roberts,  of  Manchester,  England, 
desired  to  introduce  their  self-acting  mule  into  this  country, 
after  obtaining  a  patent  for  it  here,  their  American  part- 
ner, Mr.  Bradford  Durfee,  of  Fall  River,  was  compelled  to 
smuggle  through  France  the  patterns  for  the  castings.  The 
statutes  interfering  with  the  emigration  of  artificers  were 
not  wholly  repealed  until  1825. 

During  the  long  period  in  the  history  of  the  mother 
country  in  which  she  endeavored  by  the  legislation  above  re- 
cited to  repress  the  development  of  our  manufacturing  indus- 
tries she  vigorously  protected  her  own  industries  by  customs 
duties  from  foreign  competition.  The  protection  which  she 
gave  to  her  iron  industry  after  Cort  had  perfected  for  her 
the  puddling  furnace  and  the  rolling  mill,  and  the  owners  of 
her  blast  furnaces  had  generally  introduced  steam-power  and 
the  use  of  mineral  fuel,  is  especially  noticeable.  Prior  to 
this  time  Great  Britain  had  not  made  enough  iron  to  supply 
her  own  wants ;  now  she  could  do  this.  We  quote  as  follows 
from  Scrivenor's  History  of  the  Iron  Trade. 


492  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

From  1782  till  1795  the  duty  on  foreign  bars  was  £2  16s.  2d.  per  ton. 
It  rose  to  £3  4s.  7d.  in  1797 ;  from  1798  to  1802  it  was  £3  15s.  5d. ;  in  two 
years  it  had  got  to  £4  17s.  Id. ;  from  1806  to  1808  it  stood  at  £5  7s.  5f  d. ;  in 
the  three  years  between  1809  and  1812  it  was  £5  9s.  10d.;  and  in  the  five 
years  ending  with  1818  it  had  been  £6  9s.  lOd.  At  this  date  a  distinction 
was  made  in  the  interest  of  British  shipping;  for  whilst  thenceforward,  till 
the  close  of  1825,  the  duty  on  foreign  bars  was  £6  10s.  if  imported  in  Brit- 
ish ships,  it  was  £7  18s.  6d.  if  imported  in  foreign.  Nor  was  this  all ;  iron 
slit,  or  hammered  into  rods,  and  iron  drawn  down,  or  hammered,  less  than 
three-quarters  of  an  inch  square,  was  made  to  pay  a  duty  at  the  rate  of  £20 
per  ton;  wrought  iron,  not  otherwise  enumerated,  was  taxed  with  a  pay- 
ment of  £50  for  every  £100  worth  imported ;  and  steel,  or  manufactures  of 
steel,  were  similarly  loaded  with  a  fifty  per  cent.  duty. 

It  does  not  fall  within  the  scope  of  this  work  to  discuss 
the  revenue  policy  of  the  British  Government  at  any  period 
of  the  history  of  our  own  country  further  than  to  show  its 
effects  in  retarding  the  development  of  our  iron  and  steel 
industries.  This  has  been  done.  As  germane,  however,  to 
what  has  already  been  presented  the  following  additional 
testimony  concerning  the  hostile  policy  of  the  British  Gov- 
ernment and  people  toward  American  manufacturing  indus- 
tries in  the  present  century  is  of  historical  value. 

In  1816  Lord  Brougham,  in  a  speech  in  Parliament  ad- 
vocating the  increased  exportation  of  British  goods  to  the 
United  States,  declared  that  "  it  was  well  worth  while  to  incur 
a  loss  upon  the  first  exportation,  in  order  by  the  glut  to  stifle 
in  the  cradle  those  rising  manufactures  in  the  United  States 
which  the  war  has  forced  into  existence  contrary  to  the  nat- 
ural course  of  things."  Mr.  Robertson,  a  member  of  Parlia- 
ment, said  in  a  memorable  speech  quoted  by  Henry  Clay  in 
1832:  "It  was  idle  for  us  to  endeavor  to  persuade  other  na- 
tions to  join  with  us  in  adopting  the  principles  of  what  was 
called  free  trade.  Other  nations  knew,  as  well  as  the  noble 
lord  opposite  and  those  who  acted  with  him,  what  we  meant 
by  free  trade  was  nothing  more  nor  less  than,  by  means  of 
the  great  advantages  we  enjoyed,  to  get  a  monopoly  of  all 
their  markets  for  our  manufactures,  and  to  prevent  them, 
one  and  all,  from  ever  becoming  manufacturing  nations." 
In  1843  the  London  Spectator  said  :  "  More  general  considera- 
tions tend  to  show  that  the  trade  between  the  two  countries, 
most  beneficial  to  both,  must  be  what  is  commonly  called  a 
colonial  trade ;  the  new-settled  country  importing  the  maim- 


IRON    IN   ALL   AGES.  493 

factures  of  the  old  in  exchange  for  its  own  raw  produce.  In 
all  economical  relations  the  United  States  still  stand  to  Eng- 
land in  the  relation  of  colony  to  mother  country."  William 
Huskisson,  the  pioneer  in  the  British  free  trade  movement 
and  long  a  prominent  member  of  the  British  Parliament,  de- 
clared in  a  speech  in  1825  that,  "  to  enable  capital  to  obtain 
a  fair  remuneration,  the  price  of  labor  must  be  kept  down."  In 
1854  a  British  Parliamentary  commission  declared :  "  The  la- 
boring classes  generally  in  the  manufacturing  districts  of  this 
country,  and  especially  in  the  iron  and  coal  districts,  are  very 
little  aware  of  the  extent  to  which  they  are  often  indebted  for 
their  being  employed  at  all  to  the  immense  losses  which  their 
employers  voluntarily  incur  in  bad  times  in  order  to  destroy 
foreign  competition  and  to  gain  and  keep  possession  of  for- 
eign markets.  .  .  .  The  large  capitals  of  this  country  are 
the  great  instruments  of  warfare  against  the  competing  capi- 
tal of  foreign  countries." 


494  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


CHAPTER  LVL 

THE   AMERICAN    IRON   INDUSTRY    LONG    DEPRESSED 
BY    FOREIGN   COMPETITION. 

DURING  the  Revolution  and  immediately  after  its  close 
the  iron  industry  of  Great  Britain  was  greatly  stimulated  by 
the  general  substitution  of  bituminous  coal  for  charcoal,  by 
the  application  of  the  steam  engine  to  the  blowing  of  blast 
furnaces,  and  by  the  introduction  of  the  puddling  furnace 
and  of  grooved  rolls  in  refining  and  finishing  iron.  These 
improvements  greatly  increased  and  cheapened  the  products 
of  British  iron  works,  so  that,  instead  of  being  dependent  up- 
on the  United  States  for  a  supply  of  pig  iron  and  bar  iron, 
British  iron  manufacturers  were  enabled  to  send  these  and 
other  iron  products  to  the  former  colonies  of  Great  Britain 
in  successful  competition  with  their  own  manufactures.  The 
effect  of  these  changes  was  to  greatly  retard  the  extension 
of  our  iron  industry  after  the  Revolution.  The  competition 
which  produced  this  result  might  have  been  averted  if  the 
emancipated  colonies  had  followed  the  example  of  the  mother 
country  and  imposed  duties  upon  foreign  iron  and  steel  which 
would  have  fully  protected  the  domestic  manufacture  of  these 
products.  But  they  did  not  do  this,  although  the  desire  for 
industrial  independence  was  one  of  the  leading  causes  of  the 
Revolution,  and  although  the  fact  was  fully  recognized  after 
our  political  independence  was  secured  that  domestic  manu- 
factures were  greatly  in  need  of  the  protection  against  for- 
eign competition  which  only  high  duties  could  give  to  them. 
Under  the  Articles  of  Confederation,  and  for  many  years  af- 
ter the  establishment  of  our  "  more  perfect  union,"  duties 
upon  foreign  imports  of  every  description  were  so  low  that 
they  afforded  no  adequate  protection  to  American  manufact- 
ures. From  1789  to  1812  the  duties  on  pig  iron  and  bar 
iron  ranged  from  only  5  per  cent,  to  19 J  per  cent,  of  their 
value.  In  the  same  years  the  duty  on  steel  ranged  from  50 
cents  to  $1.10  per  cwt.  These  were  but  little  else  than  reve- 
nue duties.  During  all  of  this  period  our  manufactures  of 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  495 

iron  and  steel  did  not  flourish*;  nor  did  any  other  American 
manufacturing  industry. 

The  following  petition,  presented  to  the  General  Assem- 
bly of  Pennsylvania  on  November  30,  1785,  two  years  before 
the  framing  of  the  Federal  Constitution,  shows  the  effect  at 
that  time  of  foreign  competition,  principally  from  Great 
Britain,  upon  the  manufacture  of  bar  iron  in  Pennsylvania. 
It  will  be  remembered  that  under  the  Articles  of  Confeder- 
ation each  State  reserved  to  itself  the  control  of  all  duties 
upon  imported  foreign  commodities,  a  reservation  which  work- 
ed so  badly  in  many  ways  that  the  creation  of  our  present 
form  of  government  soon  became  a  necessity  from  this  cause 
alone.  Pennsylvania  had,  however,  been  slow  to  assert  the 
need  of  protection  for  some  of  her  infant  manufactures,  as 
the  disastrous  fate  of  the  petition  referred  to  will  testify. 

To  the  Honorable  the  Representatives  of  the  Freemen  of  the  Commonwealth 
of  Pennsylvania  in  General  Assembly  met. 

The  petition  of  the  subscribers,  manufacturers  of  bar  iron  within  the 
Commonwealth  aforesaid,  respectfully  sheweth. 

That,  by  an  act  passed  during  the  last  session  of  the  late  Assembly,  ad- 
ditional duties  are  laid  on  the  importation  of  divers  manufactures  of  Europe 
and  other  foreign  parts,  for  the  purpose  of  protecting  and  encouraging  the 
manufactures  of  this  State,  wherein  your  petitioners  find  the  article  of  bar 
iron  has  been  omitted. 

That  the  manufacturing  of  bar  iron  within  this  State  has  not  only  been 
found  very  useful  and  important  during  the  late  war,  but  has  always  been 
considered  as  a  source  of  public  wealth  and  benefit ;  as  great  sums  of  money 
were  thereby  kept  within  the  country  ;  which  circulating  through  the  hands 
of  several  thousand  persons,  employed  in  the  manufacture  of  bar  iron  and 
furnishing  the  requisite  materials,  enabled  them  to  maintain  themselves 
and  their  families  and  contribute  to  the  support  of  government  by  payment 
of  taxes ;  and  an  influx  of  specie  and  other  considerable  advantages  were 
also  derived  to  the  trade  of  this  State  by  the  exportation  of  great  quantities 
of  bar  iron  to  other  parts  of  the  continent. 

That,  although  most  of  the  iron  manufactured  within  this  State  is  con- 
fessedly superior  in  quality  to  the  iron  imported  from  foreign  parts,  yet,  be- 
cause iron  can  not  be  manufactured  at  so  low  a  price  here  as  in  countries 
where  the  laborers  are  but  little  removed  above  the  condition  of  slaves,  the 
sale  of  divers  large  quantities  of  foreign  iron  lately  imported  into  this  State, 
notwithstanding  its  inferior  quality,  operates  so  much  to  the  prejudice  of  all 
persons  concerned  in  the  manufacture  of  bar  iron  here  that  there  is  great 
reason  to  apprehend,  unless  the  legislature  shall  extend  their  aid,  further 
importations  of  foreign  iron  will  in  a  short  time  occasion  a  total  stoppage 
and  destruction  of  that  very  useful  and  beneficial  manufacture  amongst  us. 

Your  petitioners  trust  that,  on  full  consideration  of  the  premises,  the 


496  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

manufacture  of  bar  iron  within  this  «,State  will  appear  to  your  Honorable 
House  essentially  entitled  to  public  protection  and  encouragement,  and 
therefore  pray  your  Honorable  House  may  be  pleased  to  grant  relief  in  the 
premises  by  laying  such  additional  duties  on  foreign  bar  iron  as  will  pre- 
vent further  importations  thereof  becoming  destructive  or  oppressive  to  the 
manufacture  of  bar  iron  within  this  State.  And  your  petitioners  as  in  duty 
bound  shall  ever  pray,  &c. 

JACOB  MORGAN,  JR.        JOHN  PATTON.  JAMES  OLD. 

DAVID  POTTS.  GEORGE  EGE.  JNO.  EDWARDS. 

JAMES  HARTLEY.  JACOB  WINEY.  WILLIAM  BIRD. 

ANDW.  PETTITT.  VALENTINE  ECKERT.  JACOB  LESHET. 

JESSE  GRUNFIELD.  PETER  GRUBB,  JR.  MICHL.  EGE. 

THOS.  HUMPHREYS.          CURTIS  GRUBB.  JN.  HELLINGS. 

THOS.  RUTTER.  PETER  GRUBB,  SR.  ABRM.  SHARPLES. 

THOS.  MAYBURRY.  ROBT.  COLEMAN.  HILARY  BAKER. 

SAML.  POTTS.  MATTHIAS  HOUGH.  C.  DOUGLASS. 

J.  HOCKLEY.  WILLIAM  OLDE.  RICHD.  BACKHOUSE. 

WM.  HAYES.  DAVID  JENKINS. 

This  petition  was  referred  on  the  day  of  its  presentation 
to  a  committee  composed  of  Mr.  Fitzimmons,  Mr.  Clymer, 
and  Mr.  Whitehill,  who  submitted  an  adverse  report  on  the 
7th  of  December,  as  follows  :  "  That  with  respect  to  bar  iron 
it  appears  that  a  sufficient  quantity  may  be  made  in  the 
State,  not  only  for  its  particular  use,  but  a  large  overplus  for 
exportation,  but  that,  by  the  large  importations  lately  made, 
the  price  is  so  much  reduced  as  to  disable  the  owners  of  forg- 
es to  go  on  with  their  business.  Your  committee,  however, 
viewing  bar  iron  as  necessary  to  the  agriculture  and  manu- 
factures of  the  State,  are  doubtful  of  the  propriety  of  impos- 
ing a  tax  upon  the  importation  thereof  at  this  time."  The 
committee,  however,  recommended  the  imposition  of  an  ad- 
ditional duty  of  one  penny  per  pound  on  all  nails  or  spikes 
imported  into  the  State.  The  report  of  the  committee  was 
adopted. 

Further  evidence  of  the  injurious  effects  of  foreign  com- 
petition upon  our  domestic  iron  industry  immediately  after 
the  peace  is  furnished  in  the  following  extract  from  the  ac- 
count of  Dr.  John  D.  Schoepf's  travels*  in  {he  United  States, 
published  at  Erlangen  in  1788. 

America  is  richly  supplied  with  iron,  especially  in  the  mountainous  dis- 
tricts, and  the  ore  is  moreover  easily  obtained ;  nevertheless,  and  in  spite  of 
the  abundance  of  wood,  at  present  European  iron  can  be  brought  to  America 
cheaper  than  the  founders  and  forgers  of  that  place  are  able  to  produce  it,  by 
reason  of  the  high  wages  of  the  workmen.  The  owners  of  the  iron  works 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  497 

in  the  different  provinces,  particularly  in  Pennsylvania  and  Jersey,  tried  in 
vain  to  induce  their  governments  to  prohibit  the  importation  of  foreign  iron, 
or  to  clog  it  with  high  duties.  As  this  proposition  conflicted  directly  with  the 
interests  of  the  members  of  the  assembly,  as  well  as  with  those  of  their  fel- 
low countrymen,  it  certainly  could  not  be  expected  that  they  should  decide  to 
pay  dearer  for  their  native  iron  and  iron  implements,  when  foreigners  could 
supply  them  cheaper.  'Formerly  the  Americans  were  able  to  send  their  pig 
and  bar  iron  to  England  with  advantage,  for  they  were  relieved  of  the  heavy 
tax  which  Russian  and  Swedish  iron  paid  there.  This  was  the  case  princi- 
pally from  the  middle  colonies,  and  in  the  years  1768-70  the  exports  to  Eng- 
land amounted  to  about  2,592  tons  of  bar  iron  and  4,624  tons  of  pig  iron, 
with  wThich  they  paid  for  a  part  at  least  of  their  return  cargoes  in  England. 
In  return  they  took  back  axes,  hoes,  shovels,  nails,  and  other  manufactured 
iron  implements,  for,  although  some  of  these  articles  were  occasionally  man- 
ufactured in  America  just  as  good  as  in  Europe,  yet  it  could  not  be  done 
under  at  least  three  times  the  cost.  Therefore,  up  to  this  time,  the  man- 
ufacture of  cast  iron  alone  has  been  found  to  be  particularly  advantageous. 

It  %as  not  until  our  second  war  with  Great  Britain  that 
duties  were  so  increased  as  to  be  really  protective  of  domes- 
tic industries  against  foreign  competition.  But  these  duties 
were  subsequently  reduced,  and  again  all  our  industries  lan- 
guished. The  tariffs  of  1824  and  1828  again  revived  them, 
but  subsequent  tariff  legislation  was  for  many  years  so  fitful 
and  in  the  main  so  unfriendly  that  no  American  industry 
can  truthfully  be  said  to  have  been  placed  upon  a  substan- 
tial basis  of  prosperity  until  after  the  adoption  of  the  Morrill 
tariff  at  the  beginning  of  the  civil  war,  in  1861.  The  pro- 
tective policy  which  was  then  reaffirmed  has  since  continued 
in  force  without  material  modification,  and  the  marvelous 
progress  of  the  country  in  the  years  that  have  since  elapsed 
is  mainly  the  result  of  its  beneficent  operations. 

The  Morrill  tariff  act,  as  might  be  erroneously  inferred 
from  its  date,  was  not  a  war  measure,  but  a  measure  render- 
ed absolutely  necessary  by  the  depressed  condition  of  our 
manufacturing  industries  and  by  the  low  condition  of  the 
national  finances  before  the  war-cloud  arose.  The  bill  was 
reported  to  the  House  of  Representatives  on  March  12, 1860, 
by  Mr.  Morrill,  of  Vermont,  from  the  Committee  on  Ways 
and  Means,  and  it  passed  that  body  on  May  10th.  It  passed 
the  Senate  on  February  20, 1861,  and  was  approved  by  Pres- 
ident Buchanan  on  March  2d,  taking  effect  on  April  1,  1861. 
Our  present  tariff,  known  as  the  McKinley  bill,  became  a  law 
on  October  1, 1890,  and  it  took  effect  on  October  6, 1890. 


498  THE    MANUFACTURE    OP 


CHAPTER  .  LVII. 

IMPEDIMENTS  TO  THE  CHEAP  PRODUCTION  OF  IRON 
AND  STEEL  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

THE  iron  and  steel  industries  of  the  United  States  are 
subject  to  permanent  disadvantages  from  which  the  same 
industries  of  other  countries  are  in  a  great  measure  relieved. 
It  is  true  that  it  can  not  now  be  said,  as  was  once  said,  that 
they  lack  the  skill,  or  the  capital,  or  the  extensive  and  com- 
plete establishments  of  other  countries.  With  the  exception 
of  our  tinplate  industry  they  are  no  longer  infant  industries 
in  any  sense.  Nor  can  it  be  said  that  the  natural  resources 
of  our  country  for  the  manufacture  of  iron  and  steel  are  not 
abundant  and  varied.  But  our  iron  and  steel  industries  are  at 
a  disadvantage  in  two  important  particulars  when  compared 
with  those  of  other  countries.  The  wages  of  labor  are  much 
higher  in  this  country  than  in  any  other  ironmaking  country 
in  the  world,  while  the  raw  materials  of  production,  rich  and 
abundant  as  they  are,  are  in  the  main  so  remote  from  each 
other  that  a  heavy  cost  for  their  transportation  is  incurred 
to  which  no  other  ironmaking  country  is  subjected. 

With  reference  to  wages  a  single  illustration  will  show 
the  disparity  which  exists  in  the  iron  and  steel  industries  of 
this  country  and  Europe.  At  Pittsburgh  the  price  of  pud- 
dling, or  boiling,  iron  was  fixed  for  one  year  on  the  30th  of 
May,  1881,  in  an  agreement  between  the  employers  and  their 
workmen,  at  a  minimum  of  $5.50  per  ton,  the  price  to  be 
advanced  if  the  price  of  bar  iron  should  go  above  2J-  cents 
per  pound.  Of  the  $5.50  the  puddler's  helper  received  about 
one-third.  These  rates  of  wages  still  continue,  with  the  excep- 
tion that  the  base  price  of  bar  iron  is  now  2  cents.  At  Phil- 
adelphia, in  an  agreement  between  the  employers  and  their 
workmen  on  the  24th  of  July,  1880,  the  price  of  puddling 
was  fixed  for  an  indefinite  period,  which  still  continues,  at 
$4  per  ton  when  bar  iron  should  bring  2  cents  per  pound,  of 
which  sum  the  helper  receives  about  one-third.  When  the 
price  of  bar  iron  is  2-J-  cents  per  pound  the  price  of  pud- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  499 

dling  is  to  be  $4.50  per  ton,  the  helper  to  receive  about  one- 
third.  If  the  price  of  bar  iron  advances  beyond  2-J  cents 
per  pound  the  price  of  puddling  is  to  be  still  further  ad- 
vanced. The  Pittsburgh  schedule  of  wages  for  puddling 
prevails  in  the  western  parts  of  the  United  States,  and  the 
Philadelphia  schedule  is  fairly  representative  of  the  wages 
paid  in  eastern  rolling  mills. 

Now  let  these  rates  of  wages  be  compared  with  the  corre- 
sponding rates  which  prevail  in  England,  in  which  country 
the  wages  of  iron  and  steel  workers  are  usually  higher  than 
in  any  other  part  of  Europe.  The  North  of  England  is  the 
principal  seat  of  the  iron  industry  of  that  country.  A  board 
of  arbitration  and  conciliation  for  the  manufactured  iron 
trade  of  the  North  of  England  adjusts  the  wages  of  all  roll- 
ing-mill workmen  in  the  district  every  three  months  upon 
the  basis  of  the  average  net  selling  price  of  rolled  iron  dur- 
ing the  three  months  preceding  the  month  in  which  the 
board  meets.  The  average  net  selling  price  of  rolled  iron 
for  the  three  months  which  ended  on  the  30th  of  June, 
1881,  (a  period  of  prosperity  and  good  prices,)  was  <£6  2s.  2d., 
and  the  wages  of  puddlers  for  the  three  months  beginning 
on  the  1st  of  August  was  officially  declared  to  be  7s.  per 
ton,  or  about  $1.75,  of  which  sum  the  puddler's  helper,  in 
accordance  with  the  general  custom,  received  about  one-third. 
The  official  announcement  of  the  adjustment  of  wages,  dated 
July  29th,  is  as  follows  :  "  In  accordance  with  the  sliding- 
scale  arrangement  and  the  resolution  of  the  employers' 
meeting  of  February  24th  the  above-named  figure  of  £6  2s. 
2d.  gives  7s.  per  ton  as  the  rate  for  puddling  over  the  three 
months  commencing  on  the  1st  of  August,  and  a  reduction 
of  other  forge  and  mill  wages  of  2-J-  per  cent,  upon  last  quar- 
ter." The  same  system  of  adjusting  wages  prevails  in  the 
North  of  England  to-day,  and  wages  are  no  higher  now  than 
in  1881.  The  difference  in  puddlers'  wages  in  the  North  of 
England  and  in  this  country  in  the  same  periods  of  time 
is  thus  seen  to  be  very  great. 

With  regard  to  the  cost  of  transporting  raw  materials  in 
this  country  and  in  Europe  the  testimony  of  a  distinguish- 
ed English  ironmaster  will  be  sufficient  to  show  the  great 
disparity  which  exists  in  the  distances  over  which  they 


500  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

must  be  transported.  Sir  Lowthian  Bell,  a  commissioner 
from  Great  Britain  to  .the  Philadelphia  Exhibition  of  1876, 
says  in  his  official  report :  "  The  vast  extent  of  the  territory 
of  the  United  States  renders  that  possible  which  in  Great 
Britain  is  physically  impossible ;  thus  it  may  and  it  does 
happen  that  in  -the  former  distances  of  nearly  1,000  miles 
may  intervene  between  the  ore  and  the  coal,  whereas  with 
ourselves  it  is  difficult  to  find  a  situation  in  which  the  two 
are  separated  by  even  100  miles."  From  the  iron-ore  mines 
of  Michigan  and  Minnesota  to  the  coal  of  Pennsylvania  is 
1,000  miles.  Connellsville  coke  is  taken  600  miles  to  the 
blast  furnaces  of  Chicago  and  750  miles  to  the  blast  furnaces 
of  St.  Louis.  The  average  distance  over  which  all  the  do- 
mestic iron  ore  which  is  consumed  in  the  blast  furnaces  of 
the  United  States  is  transported  is  not  less  than  400  miles, 
and  the  average  distance  over  which  the  fuel  which  is  used 
to  smelt  it  is  transported  is  not  less  than  200  miles.  Great 
Britain  is  our  principal  competitor  in  the  production  of 
iron  and  steel.  In  France,  Germany,  Belgium,  Sweden,  and 
other  European  ironmaking  countries  the  raw  materials  of 
production  may  not  be  found  in  such  close  proximity  as  in 
Great  Britain,  but  they  lie  much  nearer  to  each  other  than 
is  usual  in  the  United  States.  Even  when  it  is  necessary 
to  transport  raw  materials  from  one  European  country  to 
another,  as  in  taking  the  iron  ores  of  Spain  to  England  or 
Germany,  the  cost  of  removal  is  usually  an  unimportant 
consideration  because  of  the  short  distances  they  are  carried 
and  the  facilities  which  in  most  cases  exist  for  carrying 
them  by  water. 

But  it  is  not  only  on  the  raw  materials  that  the  cost  of 
transportation  operates  as  an  impediment  to  European  prices 
for  iron  and  steel  products  in  this  country.  The  manufact- 
ured products  themselves  must  frequently  be  transported 
long  distances  to  find  consumers.  The  conditions  favorable 
to  the  production  of  iron  and  steel  are  not  equal  in  many 
sections  of  the  Union,  and  in  some  sections  do  not  exist  at 
all ;  iron  and  steel  can  not,  therefore,  be  extensively  or  prof- 
itably manufactured  in  all  sections.  The  country,  too,  is  of 
vast  extent,  while  its  railroad  and  other  enterprises  which 
consume  iron  and  steel  are  found  in  every  part  of  it.  It  is 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  501 

noticeable,  also,  that  railroads  form  the  principal  means  of 
communication  between  the  producers  and  consumers  of  iron 
and  steel  in  this  country,  and  that  railroad  transportation  is 
more  expensive  than  transportation  by  natural  water  routes. 
Heavy  products  of  iron  and  steel,  for  instance,  can  be  car- 
ried much  more  cheaply  from  Liverpool  to  the  gulf  ports  of 
the  United  States  than  from  our  own  rolling  mills  and  blast 
furnaces  which  are  not  situated  on  the  sea-coast  or  on  the 
Mississippi  river,  and  very  few  of  them  are  so  situated. 
Steel  rails  for  railroads  on  the  Pacific  coast  can  be  trans- 
ported more  cheaply  from  Liverpool  to  San  Francisco  than 
from  Pittsburgh  or  Chicago.  Even  to  ports  on  the  Atlantic 
coast  it  can  truthfully  be  said  that,  taking  them  as  a  whole, 
British  iron  and  steel  products  can  be  carried  more  cheaply 
than  from  our  own  iron  and  steel  works  which  are  located 
only  a  short  distance  in  the  interior.  No  freight  is  better 
adapted  to  the  ballasting  of  ships  which  come  to  this  country 
for  grain  and  cotton  than  heavy  products  of  iron  and  steel, 
and  these  products  are  therefore  usually  carried  at  very  low 
rates.  Ocean  freight  charges  afford  no  protection  to  our  iron 
and  steel  manufacturers. 

So  much  are  high  wages  and  the  high  cost  of  transporta- 
tion hindrances  to  the  cheap  production  of  iron  and  steel  in 
this  country  that  English  newspapers  frequently  boast  of  the 
superior  facilities  possessed  by  British  manufacturers  in  these 
respects.  The  London  Colliery  Guardian  for  January  25, 1884, 
remarks  upon  this  subject 'as  follows  :  "  The  very  smallness  of 
Great  Britain  tells  in  its  favor  as  a  manufacturing  country. 
Raw  materials  have  to  be  carried  comparatively  limited  dis- 
tances, and  coal,  iron,  and  labor  are  collected  and  brought 
together  with  extreme  ease,  while  the  manufactured  article, 
when  ready  for  exportation,  has  to  be  carried  only  a  few 
miles  to  some  convenient  port.  All  these  elements  of  indus- 
trial success  are  more  or  less  lacking  in  the  United  States. 
Labor  is  still  comparatively  scarce  there  and  has  to  be  re- 
munerated at  higher  rates,  while  coal  and  iron  have  to  be 
hauled  great  distances  before  they  become  available  for  use. 
When  manufactured  goods  are  turned  out  they  have  also 
in  many  cases  to  be  carried  heavy  distances  before  they  can 
be  put  on  board  ship." 


502  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 


CHAPTER  LVIII. 

WASHINGTON  AND  LINCOLN  THE  DESCENDANTS  OF 
COLONIAL  IRONMASTERS. 

THE  completeness  of  the  narrative  which  will  be  pre- 
sented in  this  chapter  requires  that  we  reproduce  a  few  facts 
which  have  already  been  stated. 

In  our  researches  into  the  history  of  the  manufacture  of 
iron  and  steel  in  the  United  States  we  have  been  impressed 
by  the  fact  that  many  of  the  men  who  have  been  promi- 
nent in  shaping  the  destinies  of  the  country,  either  as  sol- 
diers or  statesmen,  or  whose  descendants  have  been  thus 
distinguished,  have  also  been  prominent  as  manufacturers  of 
iron  and  sometimes  also  of  steel.  Among  the  ironmasters 
and  ironworkers  in  colonial  times  we  find  the  names  of 
Mordecai  Lincoln,  the  progenitor  of  Abraham  Lincoln ;  Sir 
William.  Keith,  Governor  of  Pennsylvania  ;  Colonel  Alexander 
Spots  wood,  Governor  of  Virginia  ;  Captain  Augustine  Wash- 
ington, the  father  of  George  Washington  and  his  two  elder 
half-brothers,  Lawrence  and  Augustine  Washington ;  Colonel 
Ethan  Allen,  General  Daniel  Morgan,  and  General  Nathanael 
Greene,  of  the  Revolutionary  army  ;  and  Stephen  Hopkins, 
George  Taylor,  George  Ross,  and  James  Smith,  signers  of 
the  Declaration.  Benjamin  Franklin  was  the  inventor  of  the 
Franklin  stove.  Since  the  Revolution  we  find  that  a  still 
larger  number  of  our  public  men  have  been  identified  with 
our  iron  and  -steel  industries,  many  of  whom  have  been  mem- 
bers of  Congress  and  Governors  of  States.  Henry  Baldwin, 
one  of  th.e  Justices  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court; 
John  Henry  Hopkins,  Episcopal  Bishop  of  Vermont  ;  and 
General  Arthur  St.  Clair  were  Pennsylvania  ironmasters 
early  in  the  present  century.  At  a  later  day  Thaddeus  Ste- 
vens was  a  Pennsylvania  ironmaster. 

The  close  connection  of  the  Washington  family  with  our 
colonial  iron  history  is  a  fact  of  special  interest  to  all  who 
care  anything  about  the  early  history  of  our  iron  and  steel 
industries.  Captain  Augustine  Washington  was  engaged  in 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  503 

making  pig  iron  at  Accokeek  furnace,  in  Stafford  county, 
Virginia,  about  fifteen  miles  from  Fredericksburg,  when  his 
son  George  Washington  was  born.  This  furnace  had  been 
built  by  the  Principio  Company,  composed  of  English  capi- 
talists, as  early  as  1726  on  land  owned  by  Augustine  Wash- 
ington, aggregating  about  1,600  acres  and  containing  iron 
ore,  Captain  Washington  becoming  the  owner  of  one-sixth 
of  the  furnace  property  in  consideration  of  the  transfer  of 
his  land  to  the  company.  In  Maryland  the  Principio  Com- 
pany had  other  iron  enterprises.  Captain  Washington  ap- 
pears to  have  visited  England  in  1729  and  1730  in  relation 
to  the  management  of  Accoceek  furnace.  During  his  absence 
his  wife  died,  but  this  event  excites  no  sympathy  in  a  letter 
from  John  Wightwick,  one  of  the  English  stockholders  in 
the  Principio  Company,  written  at  London  on  October  2, 
1730,  and  addressed  to  John  England,  the  company's  gen- 
eral agent  in  Maryland  and  Virginia.  From  this  letter  we 
quote  literally  as  follows. 

You  remember  what  steps  we  made  with  Captn  Washington  in  order 
to  his  management  at  Accokeek,  which  we  did  suppose  when  he  arrived 
there,  &  after  he  had  agreed  with  the  founder  as  to  the  quality  of  the  pig 
metall,  he  would  have  given  orders  to  his  agent  here  to  have  exchanged 
the  articles  with  us  (which  he  left  ready  executed  for  that  purpose)  and 
on  your  arrival  in  Virginia  to  see  the  stock  valued  and  to  have  the  prop- 
er securities  given  for  his  returning  it  to  us  at  the  end  of  his  term,  he 
would  have  entered  immediately  on  that  work  according  to  our  agreement 
in  the  said  articles,  but  we  have  Ltres.  from  him  of  the  10th  of  July  in 
which  he  says  that  on  his  arrival,  to  his  great  grief,  he  found  his  wife 
was  dead ;  that  he  had  been  at  the  furnace,  and  that  we  might  depend 
of  his  using  as  much  prudence  and  caution  'till  your  arrival  as  if  it  was 
for  himself,  but  says  not  one  word  whether  he  would  take  to  his  bargain 
with  us  or  not,  having  had  sufficient  time  to  consider  of  it  between  the 
26th  May  the  time  of  his  arrival  &  the  10th  July  the  date  of  his  let- 
ter. I  think  this  is  treating  us  neither  kindly  nor  Honorably  to  leave  us 
in  so  great  a  state  of  uncertainty.  As  to  Mr.  Gee  he  says  he  is  on  this 
account  very  unwilling  to  have  anything  to  do  with  him.  As  to  Mrs 
[Messrs.]  Chetwynds  and  myself,  &  I  believe  Mr.  Russell,  we  shall  sub- 
mit to  what  you  shall  advise  us  in  case  when  you  come  to  talk  with  him 
you  find  him  inclined  to  pursue  his  bargain.  If  you  find  he  does  not  pur- 
sue his  bargain,  I  don't  doubt  but  you  will  settle  our  affairs  there  on  as 
good  a  foot  as  the  nature  thereof  will  allow,  and  I  hope  by  the  help  of 
N.  Chapman  and  your  directions  that  work  will  be  as  well  managed  as  if 
Captn  W.  undertook  it. 

Nathaniel  Chapman  was  the  clerk  at  Accokeek  furnace. 


504  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

Gee,  Russell,  and  the  Chetwynds  were  English  stockholders. 
We  have  been  unable  to  discover  whether  Captain  Washing- 
ton kept  his  "  bargain "  to  manage  the  furnace  or  not,  but 
in  Colonel  William  Byrd's  Progress  to  the  Mines,  written  in 
1732,  he  mentions  "  England's  iron  mines,  called  so  from  the 
chief  manager  of  them,  tho'  the  land  belongs  to  Mr.  Wash- 
ington." Two  miles  distant  from  the  mines  was  the  furnace. 
Colonel  Byrd  says :  "  Mr.  Washington  raises  the  ore  and  carts 
it  thither  for  twenty  shillings  the  ton  of  iron  that  it  yields. 
Besides  Mr.  Washington  and  Mr.  England  there  are  several 
other  persons  in  England  concerned  in  these  works." 

In  1731  Captain  Augustine  Washington  married  for  his 
second  wife  Mary  Ball,  a  daughter  of  Joseph  Ball,  who  re- 
sided in  Lancaster  county,  Virginia,  forming  a  part  of  "  The 
Neck."  It  was  in  this  county  that  Mary  Ball  was  born. 
Captain  Washington's  home  was  in  Westmoreland  county, 
and  it  was  here  that  Mary  Washington's  first  child,  George 
Washington,  was  born,  as  all  the  world  knows,  on  February 
11,  1731-2,  old  style. 

When  Augustine  Washington  died  in  1743  he  owned  an 
interest  ki  all  the  property  of  the  Principio  Company,  which 
he  bequeathed  to  his  son  Lawrence,  who  died  in  1752,  be- 
queathing to  his  daughter  Sarah  his  interest  "  in  the  Prin- 
cipio, Accokeek,  Kingsbury,  Laconshire,  and  North  East  iron 
works  in  Virginia  and  Maryland."  George  Washington  was 
one  of  the  executors  of  this  will.  Sarah  dying  soon  after- 
wards her  iron  interests  were  conveyed,  by  the  terms  of  her 
father's  will,  to  her  uncle,  Augustine  Washington.  At  the 
breaking  out  of  the  Revolution  "  a  certain  Mr.  Washington  " 
owned  a  one-twelfth  interest  in  the  possessions  of  the  Prin- 
cipio Company.  He  was  probably  a  son  of  George  Washing- 
ton's half-brother,  Augustine  Washington.  We  have  in  our 
possession  a  pig  of  iron  which  was  made  at  Principio  fur- 
nace in  1751,  when  Lawrence  Washington  was  one  of  its 
owners.  The  facts  which  we  have  presented  show  that  the 
Father  of  his  Country  was  the  son  of  a  Virginia  ironmas- 
ter, and  that  both  his  half-brothers  and  other  relatives  were 
also  ironmasters. 

Abraham  Lincoln's  paternal  ancestry  was  also  identified 
with  the  manufacture  of  iron.  It  is  not  so  generally  known 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  505 

as  it  should  be  that  his  ancestors  on  his  father's  side  were 
natives  of  Massachusetts  and  were  among  its  pioneer  iron- 
masters. In  Johnson's  Cyclopaedia  there  is  preserved  a  bio- 
graphical sketch  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  written  in  1859  with 
his  own  hand,  in  which  occurs  the  following  reference  to 
his  father's  family. 

"  My  paternal  grandfather,  Abraham  Lincoln,  emigrated 
from  Kockbridge  county,  Virginia,  to  Kentucky  about  1781 
or  1782,  where  a  year  or  two  later  he  was  killed  by  Indi- 
ans— not  in  battle,  but  by  stealth,  when  he  was  laboring  to 
open  a  farm  in  the  forest.  His  ancestors,  who  were  Quakers, 
went  to  Virginia  from  Berks  county,  Pennsylvania.  An  effort 
to  identify  them  with  the  New  England  family  of  the  same 
name  ended  in  nothing  more  definite  than  a  similarity  of 
Christian  names  in  both  families,  such  as  Enoch,  Levi,  Mor- 
decai,  Solomon,  Abraham,  and  the  like."  Mr.  Lincoln  prob- 
ably meant  Rockingham  county  and  not  Rockbridge  county. 

Researches  which  have  been  made  since  Abraham  Lin- 
coln became  President  clearly  establish  the  fact  that  the 
head  of  the  American  branch  of  his  father's  family,  Samuel 
Lincoln,  emigrated  from  Norwich,  England,  to  Massachusetts, 
whence  two  brothers,  his  grandsons,  emigrated  to  Pennsylva- 
nia, one  of  wrhom  was  the  President's  great-great-grandfather. 

A  communication  to  the  Hingham  Journal  of  October  10, 
1879,  says  that  among  the  early  settlers  of  Hingham,  Mas- 
sachusetts, which  was  settled  in  1635,  were  seven  persons 
named  Lincoln  who  became  the  heads  of  families.  Four  of 
these  were  named  Thomas.  Samuel  Lincoln,  who  came  to 
Hingham  in  1637,  had  four  sons,  Samuel,  Daniel,  Mordecai, 
and  Thomas.  Mordecai  Lincoln,  born  at  Hingham  on  June 
14,  1657,  followed  the  trade  of  a  blacksmith  at  Hull,  from 
which  he  removed  to  Scituate,  where  "  he  built  a  spacious 
house  and  was  a  large  contributor  toward  the  erection  of 
the  iron  works  at  Bound  Brook "  in  1703.  These  Bound 
Brook  iron  works  comprised  nothing  more  ambitious  than 
a  Catalan  forge,  which  made  wrought  iron  from  the  ore. 

Mr.  George  Lincoln,  of  Hingham,  informed  us  in  a  letter 
dated  on  October  28, 1879,  that  the  Bound  Brook  iron  works 
were  located  near  the  line  dividing  Scituate  from  Cohasset, 
at  a  place  called  Conah asset,  and  that  Mordecai  and  Daniel 


506  THE    MANUFACTURE    OP 

Lincoln  were  owners  of  the  works.  Cohasset  until  1770  was 
the  easterly  precinct  of  Hingham,  and  Scituate  was  also  near 
the  Hingham  boundary  line.  Mr.  Lincoln  also  furnished  us 
with  abstracts  of  some  deeds  recorded  in  Plymouth  and  Suf- 
folk counties  proving  the  connection  of  Mordecai  and  Daniel 
Lincoln  with  the  Bound  Brook  iron  works,  which  are  styled 
"  a  forge  or  irori  works."  From  one  of  these  abstracts  we 
take  the  following  circumstantial  statement  :  "  Dec.  21, 1713. 
George  Jackson,  of  Marblehead,  sells  to  Mordecai  Lincoln,  of 
Scituate,  '  blacksmith,'  two  parcels  of  salt-meadow  land  lying 
and  being  in  Cohasset  within  the  township  of  Hingham,"  one 
of  which  is  bounded  "  east  by  a  brook  or  river  called  Bound 
Brook,"  etc.  Other  abstracts  show  that  Mordecai  Lincoln 
was  a  prime  mover  in  the  erection  of  the  Bound  Brook  iron 
works,  and  that  it  was  from  him  that  Daniel  Lincoln  obtain- 
ed a  one-eighth  interest  in  the  works. 

Mordecai  Lincoln's  first  wife  was  Sarah  Jones,  the  daugh- 
ter of  Abraham  and  Sarah  Jones,  of  Hull.  Their  sons  were 
Mordecai,  Jr.,  born  April  24,  1686  ;  Abraham,  born  January 
13,  1688-9 ;  and  Isaac,  born  October  24,  1691.  The  Hing- 
ham Journal  says  that  Mordecai,  Jr.,  and  his  brother  Abra- 
ham removed  from  Scituate  "it  is  supposed "  to  Pennsylva- 
nia, for  their  names  afterwards  appear  among  a  list  of  tax- 
ables  in  Exeter  township,  Berks  county,  Pennsylvania.  But 
first  at  least  one  of  the  brothers  emigrated  to  New  Jersey. 
Nicolay  and  Hay  state  in  their  life  of  Lincoln  that  Mordecai 
Lincoln  removed  from  Massachusetts  to  Moiimouth,  New  Jer- 
sey, and  thence  to  Amity  township,  Berks  county,  Pennsyl- 
vania. He  died  there  in  1736.  His  brother  Abraham  finally 
settled  in  Springfield  township,  Chester  county,  Pennsylva- 
nia, as  early  as  1729.  Like  his  father  he  was  a  blacksmith. 
He  died  in  1745.  The  townships  of  Oley,  Amity,  and  Exe- 
ter, in  Berks  county,  are  contiguous,  and  in  their  early  rec- 
ords the  name  of  Lincoln  often  appears. 

Monmouth  county,  New  Jersey,  was  settled  in  part  by  a 
colony  of  Massachusetts  people,  who  erected  iron  works  at 
Tintern  Falls  in  the  township  of  Shrewsbury  about  1676. 
It  is  probable  that  the  Lincoln  brothers  emigrated  to  this 
county  because  Massachusetts  people  were  there  already  and 
because  they  were  themselves  ironworkers. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  507 

Mordecai  Lincoln,  who  emigrated  to  Berks  county,  Penn- 
sylvania, and  died  there  in  1736,  and  who  was  a  Quaker,  left 
three  sons,  John,  Mordecai,  and  Thomas,  and  probably,  as 
a  communication  in  the  Philadelphia  American  says,  a  post- 
humous son  named  Abraham.  A  posthumous  child  was 
provided  for  in  Mordecai  Lincoln's  will.  John  emigrated  to 
Buckingham  county,  Virginia,  about  1750.  He  had  a  son 
Abraham,  who  emigrated  to  Kentucky  and  was  killed  by 
the  Indians,  as  the  President  states.  This  Abraham  was  the 
grandfather  of  the  President,  his  father  being  Thomas  Lin- 
coln. It  will  be  remembered  that  there  were  many  Thomas 
Lincolns  at  Hingham,  and  that  the  father-in-law  of  Morde- 
cai Lincoln  of  Scituate  was  Abraham  Jones.  The  frequent 
appearance  of  the  names  Mordecai,  Abraham,  and  Thomas  at 
various  periods  in  the  history  of  the  Massachusetts  Lincolns 
and  their  descendants  will  be  noticed  by  the  reader. 

An  Abraham  Lincoln  of  Berks  county,  who  was  either 
the  posthumous  son  of  Mordecai  Lincoln  or  a  grandson, 
was  long  prominent  as  a  politician.  He  was  one  of  the 
county  commissioners  of  Berks  county  from  1773  to  1779, 
and  from  1782  to  1786  he  was  a  member  of  the  General 
Assembly  of  Pennsylvania.  A  letter  from  Reading,  published 
in  the  Philadelphia  Press,  says  that  after  his  service  in  the 
Assembly  Abraham  Lincoln  was  a  justice  of  the  peace  and 
ex-officio  one  of  the  justices  of  the  quarter  sessions.  "His 
signature,  which  can  be  found  attached  to  various  ancient 
documents  in  the  commissioners'  office,  indicates  that  he  was 
a  man  of  affairs,  and  it  is  not  unlike  that  of  his  illustrious 
namesake  which  is  attached  to  the  proclamation  of  eman- 
cipation." He  was  a  member  of  the  State  Convention  of 
1787  which  ratified  the  Federal  Constitution  of  that  year, 
and  which  he  voted  against,  and  he  was  an  influential  mem- 
ber of  the  State  Constitutional  Convention  of  1790.  He  died 
in  1806  in  his  70th  year,  having  been  born  in  1736. 

The  connection  of  the  Lincoln  family  with  the  manufact- 
ure of  iron  does  not  entirely  end  with  Mordecai  and  Abra- 
ham who  emigrated  from  Massachusetts  to  Pennsylvania. 
About  1775  a  furnace  was  built  on  Mossy  creek,  Augusta 
county,  Virginia,  by  Henry  Miller  and  Mark  Bird,  of  Berks 
county,  Pennsylvania,  Bird  soon  selling  his  interest  to  Miller. 


508  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

The  furnace  was  called  Miller's  furnace.  Jefferson  mentions 
it  in  his  Notes  on  the  State  of  Virginia.  J.  Marshall  McCue, 
Esq.,  of  Fishersville,  Augusta  county,  Virginia,  writes  us  an 
interesting  letter  concerning  the  early  history  of  this  furnace. 
He  says  :  "  Miller  married  Hannah,  the  oldest  of  seven  chil- 
dren of  William  Winter  and  Annie  Boone,  the  latter  a  cousin 
of  Daniel  Boone.  Nancy,  the  second,  married  George  Craw- 
ford, of  this  county,  and  Elizabeth,  the  fourth,  married  Abra- 
ham Lincoln,  the  grandfather  of  President  Lincoln.  Miller 
carried  on  the  furnace  successfully  until  some  time  in  March 
or  April,  1790,  when  he  died.  He  left  four  sons  and  four 
daughters.  The  oldest  son,  Captain  Samuel  Miller,  carried 
on  the  furnace  energetically  up  to  his  death,  which  occurred 
in  1830.  He  built  a  forge,  called  Mt.  Vernon,  on  South  river, 
near  Weyer's  Cave,  and  two  miles  from  Port  Republic,  in 
1810."  It  will  be  seen  from  this  letter  that  the  grandmother 
of  President  Lincoln  on  his  father's  side  was  Elizabeth  Win- 
ter, the  sister-in-law  of  Henry  Miller,  and  that  Captain  Sam- 
uel Miller  was  a  cousin  of  President  Lincoln's  father.  The 
Boones  were  Quaker  neighbors  of  the  Lincolns,  residing  in 
Berks  county,  Pennsylvania.  The  communication  in  the 
Philadelphia  American  from  which  we  have  already  quoted 
says  that  George  Boone  was  one  of  the  trustees  named  in 
Mordecai  Lincoln's  will  and  was  the  uncle  of  Daniel  Boone. 

A  communication  in  a  recent  issue  of  the  Philadelphia 
Ledger  says  that  there  is  an  Abraham  Lincoln  still  living  in 
Pennsylvania.  He  lives  in  Caernarvon  township,  Lancaster 
county,  about  fourteen  miles  from  Reading,  and  is  about  80 
years  old.  "  He  lives  on  a  large  and  productive  farm,  has 
a  family,  never  had  any  ambition  for  office,  and  in  general 
appearance  he  is  not  unlike  President  Lincoln,  having  the 
same  large,  erect,  gaunt  form,  and  retaining  to  a  remarkable 
degree  some  of  the  general  characteristics  of  his  famous  rela- 
tive and  namesake."  Other  Lincolns  are  still  living  in  Berks 
county. 

It  may  not  be  inappropriate  to  mention,  as  an  additional 
historical  link,  that  Nancy  Hanks,  the  mother  of  President 
Lincoln,  was  also  descended  from  a  Berks  county  family 
which  emigrated  first  to  Virginia  and  afterwards  to  Ken- 
tucky. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES. 


509 


CHAPTER  LIX. 

PRODUCTION   AND   PRICES    OF   IRON   AND   STEEL   IN 
THE  UNITED  STATES. 

No  TABULATED  statistics  of  the  production  of  iron  in  our 
colonial  history  are  extant,  and  the  materials  for  such  a  com- 
pilation appear  to  be  entirely  wanting  ;  nor  do  the  census 
statistics  of  the  United  States  contain  any  reference  to  the 
industries  of  the  country  until  1810. 

In  1814  there  was  published  A  Statement  of  the  Arts  and 
Manufactures  of  the  United  States  of  America  as  they  existed 
in  1810,  prepared  by  Tench  Coxe,  under  the  authority  of 
Albert  Gallatin,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  From  this  report 
we  obtain  the  following  information  concerning  the  condi- 
tion of  our  iron  industry  in  1810.  The  tons  are  gross  tons. 


Establishments  and  products. 

United  States. 

Pennsylvania, 

Number  of  blast  furnaces                                ....              i 

41 

Number  of  air  furnaces    .    .         .  / 

153 

6 

Tons  of  cast  iron  made  

53  908 

26  878 

Value  of  cast  iron  made  

82  981  277 

$1  301  343 

Number  of  bloomaries  

135 

4 

Tons  of  iron  made  

2564 

Value  of  iron  made  

$226034 

$16  000 

Numbpr  of  forges 

330 

78 

Tons  of  bar  iron   etc    made 

24  541 

10  969 

Value  of  bar  iron,  etc.,  made  
Number  of  trip  hammers  ...    . 

$2,874,063 
316 

$1,156,405 
50 

Product  of  trip  hammers  in  tons 

600 

Value  of  product  of  trip  hammers  

$397  898 

$73  496 

Rolling  and  slitting  mills  

34 

18 

Tons  of  rolled  iron  made  .               -v 

4  502 

Product  of  slit  iron  in  tons  j 

9,280 

98 

Value  of  rolled  and  slit  iron  

$1  215  946 

$606  426 

Number  of  naileries 

410 

175 

Pounds  of  nails  made. 

15  727  914 

7  270  825 

Value  of  nails  made  

$2  478  139 

$760  862 

In  the  totals  for  the  United  States  above  given  we  be- 
lieve the  values  to  be  correct,  as  they  include  returns  from 
every  State,  but  some  of  the  quantities  given  are  not  strictly 
accurate,  because  some  of  the  States  did  not  report  quanti- 
ties although  they  reported  values. 

The  product  of  the  steel  furnaces  in  Massachusetts,  Rhode 


510  THE   MANUFACTURE    OP 

Island,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Virginia,  and  South  Caro- 
lina in  1810  was  917  tons,  valued  at  $144,736.  Of  the  whole 
number  of  steel  furnaces  Pennsylvania  contained  5,  of  which 
Philadelphia  city  and  Philadelphia,  Lancaster,  Dauphin,  and 
Fayette  counties  each  contained  one.  The  product  of  Penn- 
sylvania was  531  gross  tons,  valued  at  $81,147. 

In  the  census  year  1820  the  value  of  all  the  manufact- 
ures of  pig  iron  and  castings  in  the  United  States  was  $2,- 
230,275,  of  which  Pennsylvania's  share  was  $563,810.  In 
the  same  year  the  United  States  produced  manufactures  of 
wrought  iron  of  the  value  of  $4,640,669,  of  which  Pennsyl- 
vania's share  was  $1,156,266.  Quantities  were  not  given. 

In  the  census  year  1830  the  value  of  the  pig  iron  and 
castings  manufactured  in  the  United  States  was  $4,757,403, 
of  which  the  share  of  Pennsylvania  was  $1,643,702.  -In 
the  same  year  the  country's  production  of  manufactures  of 
wrought  iron  amounted  in  value  to  $16,737,251,  of  which 
Pennsylvania's  share  was  $3,762,847.  Quantities  were  not 
given. 

In  the  census  year  1840  there  were  in  the  United  States 
804  furnaces,  which  produced  in  that  year  286,903  gross  tons 
of  "  cast  iron."  Pennsylvania  had  213  furnaces,  and  it  pro- 
duced 98,395  tons  of  "cast  iron."  In  the  same  year  there 
were  795  bloomaries,  forges,  and  rolling  mills  in  the  United 
States,  of  which  Pennsylvania  had  169.  The  number  of 
gross  tons  of  bar  iron  produced  in  that  year  was  197,233,  of 
which  Pennsylvania  produced  87,244  tons. 

In  the  census  year  1850  there  were  produced  in  the  Unit- 
ed States  563,755  gross  tons  of  pig  iron  by  377  establish- 
ments, of  which  Pennsylvania  produced  285,702  tons  in  180 
establishments.  In  the  same  year  the  United  States  produc- 
ed wrought  iron  manufactures  of  the  value  of  $22,629,271 
in  552  establishments,  Pennsylvania  contributing  $9,224,256 
in  value  in  162  establishments. 

In  the  census  year  1860  the  United  States,  in  97  estab- 
lishments, produced  51,290  gross  tons  of  blooms,  valued  at 
$2,623,178 ;  Pennsylvania,  in  57  establishments,  produced  24,- 
700  tons  of  blooms,  valued  at  $1,467,450.  In  the  same  year 
the  United  States,  in  286  establishments,  produced  987,559 
tons  of  pig  iron,  worth  $20,870,120 ;  Pennsylvania,  in  125  es- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES. 


511 


tablishments,  produced  580,049  tons  of  pig  iron,  worth  $11,- 
262,974.  In  256  establishments  the  United  States  produced 
513,213  tons  of  rolled  iron,  worth  $31,888,705 ;  Pennsylvania, 
in  87  establishments,  produced  266,253  tons  of  rolled  iron, 
worth  $15,122,842.  In  13  establishments  the  United  States 
produced  11,838  tons  of  steel,  worth  $1,778,240;  Pennsylva- 
nia, in  9  establishments,  produced  9,890  tons  of  steel,  worth 
$1,338,200. 

As  has  been  stated  the  ton  used  in  the  census  statistics 
of  1810,  1840,  1850,  and  1860  was  the  gross  ton  of  2,240 
pounds,  but  in  the  census  statistics  of  1870,  1880,  and  1890 
the  net  ton  of  2,000  pounds  was  used.  We  do  not  give  the 
census  statistics  for  the  last  three  decades  Because  they  are 
largely  superseded  by  the  statistics  for  the  last  thirty  years 
which  have  already  been  presented  in  these  pages  or  will  yet 
be  presented  in  this  chapter,  and  which  have  been  compiled 
by  the  American  Iron  and  Steel  Association  from  returns 
received  annually  from  the  manufacturers. 

In  preceding  chapters  we  have  given  in  their  proper  con- 
nection the  statistics  of  the  production  of  pig  iron,  iron  rails, 
Bessemer  steel  ingots,  Bessemer  steel  rails,  and  open-hearth 
steel  in  the  United  States  for  a  long  series  of  years.  We 
now  present  some  additional  statistics  of  production  in  the 
United  States  down  to  the  close  of  1890. 

The  production  of.  all  kinds  of  crude  steel  in  the  United 
States  in  1863  was  9,044  net  tons  ;  in  1864,  10,369  tons ;  in 
1865,  15,262  tons ;  in  1866,  18,973 .  tons ;  and  in  1867,  22,- 
000  tons,  including  3,000  tons  of  Bessemer  steel  ingots. 
Our  production  of  crude  steel  since  that  year  has  been  as 
follows,  the  figures  embracing  Bessemer,  open-hearth,  and 
crucible  steel ;  also  a  few  thousand  tons  annually  of  blister 
and  'other  kinds  of  steel. 


Years. 

Net  tons. 

Years. 

Net  tons. 

Years. 

Net  tons. 

1868 

30000 

1876 

597  174 

1884 

1  736  985 

1869 

35000 

1877     * 

637  972 

1885 

1  917  350 

1870 

77  000 

1878   Y 

819  814 

1886      .  . 

2  870  003 

1871      

82000 

1879. 

1  047,506 

1887  

3,739,760 

1872  

160,108 

1880  

1,397,015 

1888  

3,247,373 

1873  

222,652 

1881  

1,778,912 

1889  

3,792,020 

1874 

241  614 

1882 

1  945  095 

1890 

4  790,319 

1875 

436  575 

1883 

1  874  359 

512 


THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


The  following  table  gives  the  production  of  all  rolled 
iron  in  the  United  States,  except  iron  rails,  which  have  al- 
ready been  given,  but  including  nail  plate,  from  1865  to  1890, 
covering  the  period  since  the  close  of  our  civil  war. 


Years. 

Net  tons. 

Years. 

Net  tons. 

Years. 

Net  tons. 

1865  

500  048 

1874 

1  110  147 

1883 

2  283  920 

1866  

595,311 

1875  

1  097  867 

1  1884 

1  931  747 

1867  

579,838 

1876  

1  042  101 

i  1885 

1  789  711 

1868  

598,286 

1877  

1,144,219 

1886 

2  259  943 

1869 

642  420 

1878 

1  232  686 

1887 

2  565  438 

1870 

705000 

1879 

1  627  324 

1888 

2  397  402 

1871 

710000 

1880 

1  838  906 

1889 

2  576  127 

1872  

941992 

1881 

2  155  346 

1890 

2  804  899 

1873   

1  076  368 

1882 

2  265  957 

The  following  table  shows  the  production  of  spiegeleisen 
and  ferro-manganese  in  the  United  States  from  1875  to  1890. 
This  production  is  included  in  that  of  pig  iron  already  given. 


Years. 

Net  tons. 

Years. 

Net  tons. 

Years. 

Net  tons. 

1875 

7  832 

1881 

21  086 

1887 

47  598 

1876 

6  616 

1882 

21  963 

1888 

54  769 

1877 

8845 

1883 

24574 

1889 

85823 

1878 

10674 

1884  

33893 

1890      

149  162 

1879 

13931 

1885  

34671 

1880 

19  603 

1886  

47  982 

The  geographical  centre  of  total  production  of  the  iron 
and  steel  industries  of  the  United  States  is  the  point  at 
which  equilibrium  would  be  established  were  the  country 
taken  as  a  plane  surface,  itself  without  weight  but  capable 
of  sustaining  weight,  and  loaded  with  its  production  of  iron 
and  steel,  each  ton  exerting  pressure  on  the  pivotal  point 
directly  proportioned  to  its  distance  therefrom.  The  centre 
of  production  of  iron  and  steel  in  the  United  States  in  the 
census  year  1880  was  found  to  be  at  40°  43'  north  latitude 
and  79°  20'  longitude  west  from  Greenwich.  This  point  is 
in  Pennsylvania,  on  the  boundary  line  between  Armstrong 
and  Indiana  counties,  and  about  12  miles  northeast  of  Apol- 
lo and  12  miles  west  of  Indiana,  Laufman  &  Go's  rolling 
mill  at  Apollo  being  the  nearest  iron  works.  At  the  centre 
of  production  thus  ascertained  iron  has  never  been  manu- 
factured in  any  form.  It  will  be  interesting  to  note  the 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  513 

equilibrium  point  of  production  as  it  will  be  established  by 
the  census  of  1890,  which  is  not  yet  completed. 

The  thoughtful  reader  will  look  for  statistics  of  produc- 
tion to  be  accompanied  by  a  record  of  the  prices  paid  by 
our  people  for  leading  iron  and  steel  products.  This  record 
is  presented  in  the  following  tables.  It  goes  back  to  the  clos- 
ing years  of  the  last  century  and  comes  down  to  the  end 
of  1890.  It  is  as  complete  as  it  has  been  possible  to  make 
it,  and  no  pains  have  been  spared  to  make  it  accurate.  We 
have  not  attempted  a  compilation  of  colonial  prices,  but  the 
curious  reader  will  find  occasional  references  to  them  in  pre- 
ceding pages. 

The  first  table  contains  the  average  prices  of  charcoal  pig 
iron  at  Philadelphia  from  1799  to  1849,  when  anthracite  pig 
iron  became  the  standard  of  comparison.  Until  1827  the 
prices  are  for  the  best  pig  iron ;  from  1827  to  1833  they  are 
for  an  average  of  all  grades;  from  1833  to  1840  they  are  for 
gray  iron ;  and  from  1840  to  the  close  of  the  table  they  are 
for  No.  1  foundry.  The  same  table  also  gives  the  aver- 
age prices  of  hammered  bar  iron  at  Philadelphia  from  1794 
to  1844,  although  its  manufacture  and  sale,  which  had  been 
declining  prior  to  1844,  continued  for  several  years  after- 
wards. 

In  the  second  table  the  average  prices  .of  No.  1  anthra- 
cite foundry  pig  iron  at  Philadelphia  are  given  from  1842, 
in  which  year  quotations  first  appear,  to  1890.  In  the  same 
table  the  average  prices  of  best  refined  rolled  bar  iron  at 
Philadelphia  are  given  from  1844  to  1890,  and  the  average 
prices  of  iron  rails  delivered  at  Philadelphia  are  given  from 
1847  to  1882.  In  1883  the  manufacture  in  this  country  of 
iron  rails  of  standard  sections  virtually  came  to  an  end,  al- 
though a  few  light  iron  rails  are  still  manufactured.  A  few 
standard  iron  rails,  as  well  as  light  rails,  were  made  in 
that  year,  but  at  higher  prices  than  steel  rails  commanded. 
The  column  devoted  to  steel  rails  in  the  second  table  gives 
the  average  prices  at  works  in  Pennsylvania  from  1867,  when 
they  were  first  made  in  commercial  quantities,  to  1890.  The 
same  table  also  gives  the  average  wholesale  prices  of  cut 
nails  in  eastern  markets,  in  kegs  of  100  pounds,  from  1835  to 
1890.  The  tons  used  in  the  tables  are  tons  of  2,240  pounds. 


514 


THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 


TABLE 
1. 

Charcoal 

Hammered 

TABLE 

2. 

No.  1  an- 
thracite 

Best  re- 
fined 

Iron 

Steel 

Cut  nails, 
per  keg 

Years. 

Years. 

pig  iron. 

bar  iron. 

of  100 
pounds. 

1794 

$77  50 

1835 

eg  00 

1795 

8250 

1836 

6  00 

1796 

10650 

1837 

6  00 

1797 

101.50 

1838 

6  00 

1798 

97.50 

1839 

6  12 

1799 

$36.25 

98.50 

1840 

550 

1800  

35.75 

100.50 

1841 

5  25 

1801  

32.75 

117.50 

1842 

$25.60 

4  75 

1802  

30.75 

99.00 

1843 

4  25 

1803  

29.25 

97.50 

1844  ..   . 

25.75 

$85.62 

4  50 

1804  

29.75 

98.50 

1845    .... 

29.25 

93.75 

4  75 

1805  

30.75 

101.00 

1846  .  ..   . 

27.88 

91.66 

4  50 

1806 

3575 

10850 

1847 

30  25 

8604 

$69  00 

4  50 

1807 

3875 

11050 

1848 

2650 

79  33 

62  25 

4  25 

1808  

40.00 

104.00 

1849  

22.75 

67.50 

53.88 

4.00 

1809  

40.00 

107.50 

1850  

20.88 

59.54 

47.88 

3.71 

1810   .-.  

38.00 

108.00 

1851 

2138 

54  66 

45  63 

3  28 

1811  

44.00 

105.00 

1852  

22.63 

58.79 

48.38 

3.13 

1812  

47.50 

106.00 

1853  

36.12 

83.50 

77.25 

4.85 

1813  

47.25 

106.00 

1854 

36.88 

9133 

80  13 

476 

1814  

46.00 

133.00 

1855 

27.75 

7458 

6288 

4  10 

1815  

53.75 

144.50 

1856 

27.12 

73.75 

6438 

392 

1816  

50.25 

127.00 

1857    . 

26.38 

71.04 

64.25 

372 

1817  

47.00 

114.00 

1858  . 

22.25 

62.29 

5000 

353 

1818—  

42.25 

110.00 

1859    . 

23.38 

60.00 

49.38 

3.86 

1819  

36.50 

110.00 

I860  

22.75 

58.75 

48.00 

3.13 

1820  

35.00 

103.50 

1861  

20.25 

60.83 

42.38 

2.75 

1821  

35.00 

90.50 

1862  

23.88 

70.42 

41  75 

3.47 

1822  
1823 

35.00 
35.25 

94.50 
90.00 

1863  
1864 

35.25 
59  25 

91.04 
146  46 

76.88 
126  00 

5.13 

7  85 

1824  

40.00 

82.50 

1865  

46.12 

106.38 

98.63 

7.08 

1825  

46.75 

97.50 

1866 

46  88 

98  13 

86  75 

6  97 

1826..  

46.50 

101.50 

1867 

4412 

8708 

8313 

$166  00 

592 

1827  

39.25 

10000 

1868 

39  95 

85  63 

78  88 

158  50 

5  17 

1828  

35.00 

10000 

1869 

40  63 

81  66 

77  25 

132  25 

4  87 

1829  
1830  

35.00 
35.00 

97.00 
87.50 

1870  
1871  

33.25 
35.12 

78.96 
78  54 

72.25 
70  38 

106.75 
10250 

4.40 
4.52 

1831  

35.00 

8500 

1872 

48  88 

97  63 

85  13 

liooo 

5  46 

1832  

35.00 

8500 

1873 

42  75 

86  43 

76  67 

120  50 

4  90 

1833  
1834  
1835  
1836 

38.25 
30.25 
30.25 
41.50 

82.50 
82.50 
81.50 
100  00 

1874  
1875  
1876  

1877 

30.25 
25.50 
22.25 
18  88 

67.95 
60.85 
52.08 
45  55 

58.75 
47.75 
41.25 
35  25 

94.25 
68.75 
59.25 
45  50 

3.99 
3.42 
2.98 
9  57 

1837  

41.25 

111  00 

1878 

17  63 

44  ^4 

33  75 

42  25 

2  31 

1838  

32.25 

93  50 

1879 

21  50 

51  85 

41  25 

48  25 

2  69 

1839  
1840  

30.00 
32.75 

96.50 
90.00 

1880  
1881  

28.50 
25.12 

60.38 
5805 

49.25 
4713 

67.50 
61.13 

3.68 
3.09 

1841  
1842  
1843  

28.50 
28.00 
26.75 

85.00 
83.50 
77.50 

1882  
1883  
1884  

25.75 
22.38 
19.88 

61.41 
50.30 
44.05 

45.50 

48.50 
37.75 
30.75 

3.47 
3.06 
2.39 

1844  

28.25 

75.00 

1885  

18.00 

40.32 

28.50 

2.33 

1845 

32.25 

1886 

18  71 

43  12 

34  50 

2  27 

1846  

31.25 

1887  

2092 

4937 

37  08 

2.30 

1847  

31.50 

1888 

18  88 

44  99 

29  83 

°03 

1848  

28.50 

1889 

17  75 

43  40 

99  25 

200 

1849  

24.50 

1890 

18  40 

45  92 

31  75 

2  CO 

IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  515 

A  study  of  the  foregoing  tables  reveals  many  and  wide 
fluctuations  in  prices.  The  greatest  uniformity  will  be  no- 
ticed during  the  charcoal  era,  ending  about  1844,  allowance 
being  made  for  the  disturbing  effects  of  the  second  war  with 
Great  Britain.  The  greatest  fluctuations  will  be  found  since 
the  close  of  that  era,  not  counting  the  great  enhancement 
in  values  during  the  civil  war.  In  other  words,  before  we 
began  to  produce  iron  largely,  and  especially  while  we  held 
to  the  old  ways  of  manufacturing  it,  the  market  for  its  sale 
was  least  excited  and  least  depressed.  The  new  methods  re- 
duced prices  to  lower  figures  than  they  had  ever  touched  dur- 
ing the  charcoal  era,  and  the  rebound  has  frequently  been 
proportionately  greater  than  at  any  time  during  that  era. 
Until  we  began  to  manufacture  pig  iron  with  anthracite  coal 
its  yearly  price  after  1798  never  fell  below  $29  per  ton,  but 
in  1878  the  average  price  for  the  year  of  No.  1  anthracite 
foundry  pig  iron  was  $17.63.  Until  we  began  to  roll  the 
most  of  our  bar  iron,  instead  of  hammering  it,  its  yearly 
price  after  1794  did  not  fall  below  $77.50  per  ton,  but  in 
1885  the  average  price  for  the  year  was  $40.32,  or  much  less 
than  two  cents  per  pound.  The  greatest  fall  in  prices  has 
been  in  steel  rails,  which  have  been  sold  at  less  than  one- 
sixth  the  price  charged  for  them  when  we  began  their  man- 
ufacture in  1867.  The  lowest  average  annual  price  at  which 
Bessemer  steel  rails  have  been  sold  in  this  country  was  reach- 
ed in  1885,  namely,  $28.50  per  ton,  but  sales  were  made  at 
still  lower  figures  in  1884,  1885,  1888,  and  1889— as  low  as 
$26  and  $27.  Wholesale  prices  of  cut  nails  have  fallen  from 
$6  per  keg  in  1835  to  an  average  of  $2  per  keg  in  1889  and 
1890,  sales  having  been  made  in  eastern  markets  in  the  last 
years  mentioned  at  $1.90  per  keg. 

The  production  of  iron  ore  in  the  United  States  in  the 
calendar  year  1889  has  been  ascertained  and  published  by 
the  Census  Office,  the  statistics  having  been  gathered  by  Mr. 
John  Birkinbine,  special  agent.  The  quantity  of  iron  ore 
produced  in  the  United  States  during  the  year  1889  was  14,- 
518,041  gross  tons,  valued  at  $33,351,978,  an  average  of  $2.30 
per  ton.  The  total  production  in  the  census  year  1880  was 
7,120,362  tons,  valued  at  $23,156,957,  an  average  of  $3.25 
per  ton.  The  increase  in  production  in  1889  over  the  census 


516 


THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


year  1880  was  103.89  per  cent.  Of  the  twenty-six  States  and 
two  Territories  producing  iron  ore  in  1889  the  four  leading 
States  were  as  follows:  Michigan,  5,856,169  tons;  Alabama, 
1,570,319  tons;  Pennsylvania,  1,560,234  tons;  and  New  York, 
1,247,537  tons :  these  four  States  producing  10,234,259  tons, 
or  70.49  per  cent,  of  the  total  production.  The  details  of  the 
production  of  iron  ore  by  all  the  iron-ore  producing  States 
and  Territories  in  1889  are  as  follows. 


States  and  Territories. 

Production  in 
1889—  Gross  tons. 

States  and  Territories. 

Production  in 
1889—  Gross  tons. 

Alabama 

1  570  319 

New  Mexico  and  Utah 

36  050 

Colorado 

109  136 

I  New  York  ...    . 

1  247  537 

Connecticut    Maine    and 

Ohio    

254  294 

Massachusetts  

88  251 

i  Oregon  and  Washington. 

26  283 

Delaware  and  Maryland 

29380 

j  Pennsylvania  

1,560234 

Georgia  and  N.  Carolina 

258  145 

Tennessee  

473,294 

24  072 

Texas 

13  000     $ 

Kentucky  

77487 

Virginia  and  West  Virginia. 

511,255 

Michigan 

5  856  169 

Wisconsin 

837399 

Minnesota 

864  508 

Missouri  

265,718 

New  Jersey 

415  510 

Mr.  Birkinbine  shows  that  62.38  per  cent,  of  the  iron 
ore  produced  in  the  United  States  in  1889  was  red  hematite ; 
that  17.38  per  cent,  was  brown  hematite ;  that  17.26  per  cent, 
was  magnetite ;  and  that  2.98  per  cent,  was  carbonate. 

Mr.  Birkinbine  also  shows  that  the  total  cost  of  the  iron 
ore  mined  in  the  United  States  in  1889  aggregated  $24,781,- 
658,  equivalent  to  an  average  cost  of  $1.71  per  ton,  against 
$2.21  in  the  census  year  1880,  a  decrease  of  50  cents  per 
•ton,  or  22.62  per  cent.  In  the  same  year,  1889,  the  average 
earnings  of  iron-ore  miners  and  other  iron-ore  producers,  in- 
cluding foremen,  in  the  United  States  amounted  to  $409.95, 
against  an  average  of  $308.94  in  the  census  year  1880,  an 
increase  of  32.70  per  cent. 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  statistics  of  our  iron-ore  in- 
dustry which  are  above  presented  show  an  increase  in  pro- 
duction in  1889  over  the  census  year  1880  of  over  100  per 
cent.,  an  average  decrease  in  the  cost  of  mining  of  50 
cents  per  ton,  an  average  decrease  in  value  at  the  mines  of 
95  cents  per  ton,  and  an  average  increase  in  earnings  per 
man  of  more  than  $100  per  annum. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES. 


517 


CHAPTER  LX. 


IMPORTS    AND    EXPORTS    OF    IRON    AND    STEEL    BY 
THE  UNITED    STATES. 

THE  exportation  of  bar  iron  from  the  American  colonies 
began  in  1717,  when  2  tons  of  bars  were  sent  to  England 
from  the  British  West  India  islands  of  Nevis  and  St.  Chris- 
topher, but  which  had  evidently  been  taken  there  from  one 
of  the  Atlantic  coast  colonies.  We  present  below  a  table, 
compiled  from  Scrivenor's  History  of  the  Iron  Trade,  showing 
the  quantity  of  colonial  iron  exported  to  England  from  1718 
to  1776,  inclusive.  The  colonies  which  made  the  shipments 
were  New  England,  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  Maryland, 
Virginia,  and  the  Carolinas.  They  were  not  permitted  to  ex- 
port their  iron  to  any  country  but  Great  Britain  or  one  of 
its  colonies,  and  not  to  Ireland  until  1765. 


Years. 

Pig  iron. 

Bar  iron. 

Years. 

Pig  iron. 

Bar  iron. 

Tons.  cwt.  qr.  Ibs. 

Tons.  cwt.  qr.  Ibs. 

Tons.  cwt.  qr.  Ibs. 

Tons.  cwt.  qr.  Ibs. 

1718 

3700 

1751  

3,210    11     1       0 

5429 

1728-9... 

1,132      234 

1752.... 

2,980      132 

81     7     0     26 

1730  

1,725    14     3       7 



1753  

2,737    19     3     27 

247    19     3     11 

1730-1... 

2,250      5     3     14 



1754  

3,244    17     1     23 

270    15     1       4 

1731-2... 

2,332    14     3      15 



1755  

3,441      238 

389    18     3     20 

1732-3... 

2,404    17     1     12 



1761  

2,766      2     3     12 

39     1     0       0 

1733 

0    11      3      0 

1762  

1,766    16     0        2 

.    122   12     2     14 

1733-4... 

2,197    10     1     14 

1763  

2,566      8     0     25 

310    19     3       2 

1734 

0     0      2    12 

1764  

2,554      8     3     21 

1,059    18     0     10 

1734-5... 

2,561    14     3     11 

1765  .. 

3,264      8     1      22 

1,078   15     0     16 

1735 

55     6      3    21 

1766  

2,887      5      1      15 

1,257    14     3       9 

1739 

2,417    16      2       4 

1767 

3,313      2     1     19 

1,325    19     0     18 

1740  

2,275      710 

5     4      1    21 

1768  

2,953      0     2     14 

1,989    11     0       6 

1741  

3,457      9     0     18 

5000 

1769  

3,401    12     2       2 

1,779   13     1     23 

1742  

2,075      0     0     23 



1770  

4,232    18     1      18 

1,716     8     0     21 

1743  

2,985      928 

1771  

5,303      6     3     13 

2,222     4     3     24 

1744  

1,861    16     1     22 

57     0      0      0 

J772  

3,724    19     2     25 

965    15     0     23 

1745  

2,274      5     1     17 

4     5      2    14 

1773  

2,937    13     0       2 

837    15     0       6 

1746  

1,861      2     3     13 

196    18      0    12 

1774  

3,451    12     2     19 

639     0     0     23 

1747  

2,156    15     3     16 

82    11      2    11 

1775  

2,996      0     2     24 

916     5     2     11 

1748  

2,155    15     2     23 

4000 

1776  

316      1      2       8 

28     0     0       0. 

1750  

2,924      0      0      20 

5    17      3      0 

In  addition  to  the  foregoing  there  were  exported  to  Scot- 
land 264  tons  of  pig  iron  and  11  tons  of  bar  iron  in  the 
ten  years  from  1739  to  1749,  and  229  tons  of  pig  iron  in  the 


518 


THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 


six  years  from  1750  to  1756.  In  1770,  as  we  learn  from  Tim- 
othy Pitkin's  Statistical  Vieiv  of  the  Commerce  of  the  United 
States,  the  following  quantities  of  iron  were  exported  to  all 
countries,  including  England,  which  is  given  above  sepa- 
rately :  Pig  iron,  6,017  tons,  valued  at  $145,628 ;  bar  iron,  2,463 
tons,  valued  at  $178,891;  castings,  2  tons,  valued  at  $158; 
and  wrought  iron,  8  tons,  valued  at  $810.  These  are  all  the 
particulars  of  our  colonial  iron  exports  that  are  obtainable. 

From  1776  to  1791  there  is  no  record  of  any  shipments 
abroad  of  American  iron,  although  some  iron  may  have  been 
shipped  in  each  year  immediately  after  the  peace.  Since 
1791  our  exports  of  iron  and  steel,  except  in  the  form  of  ma- 
chinery and  other  manufactured  products,  have  not  consti- 
tuted any  considerable  part  of  our  foreign  trade.  Until  1840 
our  annual  exports  of  iron  and  steel  and  manufactures  there- 
of uever  amounted  in  value  to  one  million  dollars.  In  1865 
they  first  amounted  to  ten  million  dollars. 

The  foreign  value  of  the  imports  into  the  United  States 
from  all  countries  of  iron  and  steel  and  manufactures  there- 
of, including  tinplates,  in  the  twenty  calendar  years  from 
1871  to  1890  is  given  in  the  following  table,  together  with  the 
value  of  the  exports  from  the  United  States  to  all  countries 
of  domestic  iron  and  steel  and  manufactures  thereof  in  the 
same  calendar  years,  agricultural  implements  not  included. 


Years. 

Imports. 

Exports. 

Years. 

Imports. 

Exports. 

1871 

157  866,299 

$14,185  359 

i  1881 

$61  555  077 

$18  216  121 

1872,  

75,617,677 

12,595,539 

1882  

67  075  1^5 

22  348  834 

1873!  

60,005,538 

14,173,772 

1883  

47  506  306 

°2  716  040 

1874  

37,652,192 

17,312,239 

1884  

37  078  122 

19  290  895 

1875  

27,363,101 

17,976,833 

1885  

31  144  552 

16  622  511 

1876 

20  016  603 

13  641  724 

1886 

41  630  779 

14  865  087 

1877 

19  874  399 

18  549  922 

1887 

56  420  607 

16  °35  922 

1878 

18  013  010 

15  101  899 

1888 

42  311  689 

19  578  489 

1879 

33,331,569 

14,223,646 

1889  

42  027  742 

23  712  814 

1880  

80,443,362 

15,156,703 

1890 

44540084 

27  000  134 

Our  exports  of  iron  and  steel  in  1890  were  the  largest 
•in.  our  history.  As  in  other  years  they  consisted  chiefly  of 
machinery,  hardware,  sewing  machines,  saws  and  tools,  loco- 
motives, fire-arms,  scales  and  balances,  nails  and  wire,  car- 
wheels  and  miscellaneous  castings,  and  engines  and  boilers. 
Our  exports  of  pig  iron  and  steel  rails  are  increasing. 


IRON    IN    ALL   AGES.  519 


CHAPTER  LXL 

MISCELLANEOUS   STATISTICS    OF   IRON,   STEEL,  IRON 
ORE,  AND  COAL. 

THE  year  1890  is  notable  in  the  history  of  the  iron  and 
steel  industries  of  the  United  States  as  the  year  in  which 
our  production  of  pig  iron  exceeded  for  the  first  time  that 
of  Great  Britain,  not  only  in  1890  but  in  1882,  the  year  of 
her  greatest  production.  This  achievement  by  American 
pig-iron  manufacturers  justifies  of  itself  the  presentation  in 
these  pages  of  complete  statistics  of  Great  Britain's  produc- 
tion of  pig  iron  for  a  long  series  of  years. 

In  1740,  exactly  151  years  ago,  the  production  of  pig  ijpn 
in  Great  Britain  was  only  17,350  tons,  the  denudation  of  her 
forests  having  almost  destroyed  her  pig-iron  industry  by 
decreasing  the  supply  of  charcoal,  and  mineral  coal  not  yet 
having  come  into  general  use. 

In  1788  there  were  only  77  active  blast  furnaces  in  Eng- 
land and  Wales  and  8  active  furnaces  in  Scotland,  and  their 
production  was  68,300  gross  tons  of  pig  iron.  Of  the  whole 
number  of  furnaces  26  used  charcoal  and  59  used  coke.  The 
imports  of  pig  iron  by  Great  Britain  in  that  year  amounted 
to  about  15,000  tons,  and  the  imports  of  bar  iron  amounted 
to  51,469  tons.  In  1796  there  were  104  furnaces  in  blast  in 
England  and  Wales,  producing  108,993  tons  of  pig  iron,  and 
in  Scotland  there  were  17  furnaces  in  blast,  producing  16,^86 
tons.  In  1806  there  were  233  furnaces  in  all  Great  Britain, 
of  which  173  were  in  blast,  producing  243,851  tons. 

The  following  table  shows  the  growth  of  the  pig-iron  in- 
dustry of  Great  Britain  from  1788  to  1890.  For  this  valuable 
and  accurate  table  we  are  indebted  to  the  courtesy  of  Mr. 
Richard  Meade,  of  the  Mineral  Statistics  Branch  of  the  Home 
Department  of  Her  Majesty's  Government.  The  table  is  com- 
piled from  the  official  records  of  the  Department.  It  begins 
with  the  revival  of  the  British  iron  industry  which  followed 
the  general '  introduction  of  coke  in  the  blast  furnace  and  of 
the  puddling  furnace  and  grooved  rolls  in  finishing  iron. 


520 


THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 


Years. 

Gross  tons. 

Years. 

Gross  tons. 

Years. 

Gross  tons. 

1788 

68  300 

1852 

2  701  000 

1872 

6  741  929 

1796  

125,079 

1854  

3,069,838 

1873  .  ... 

6  566  451 

1806  

243,851 

1855  

3,218,154 

1874  

5  991  408 

1818 

325  000 

1856 

3  586  377 

1875 

6  365  462 

1820  

400,000 

1857  

'  3,659,447 

1876  

6,555,997 

1823 

455166 

1858 

3  456  064 

1877 

6  608  664 

1825 

581  367 

1859 

3  712  904 

1878 

6  381  051 

1827 

690000 

1860 

3  8^6  752 

1879 

5  995  337 

1828.. 

703184 

.V., 

1861.. 

3  712  390 

1880 

7  749  233 

1830  

677  417 

1862  .  . 

3  943  469 

1881 

8  144  449 

1833.... 

700000 

1863  . 

4,510  040 

1882 

8  586  680 

1836  

1,000000 

1864  .  .  .. 

4,767,951 

1883 

8529300 

1839  

1,248,781 

1865  

4,825,254 

1884  . 

7  811  727 

1840  

1,396,400 

1866  

4,523,897 

1885  

7  415  469 

1842  

1,099,138 

1867  

4,761,023 

1886  

7009  754 

1843  

1,215,350 

1868  

4,970,206 

1887  

7,559,518 

1844  

1,999,608 

1869  

5,445,757 

1888  

7,998  969 

1845  

1,512,500 

1870  

5,963,515 

1889  

8,322,824 

1847  

1.999.508 

1871  

6.627.179 

1890  

7.904.214 

The  production  of  pig  iron  in  the  United  States  in  1890 
was  9,202,703  gross  tons,  which  was  1,298,489  gross  tons  more 
than  that  of  Great  Britain  in  the  same  year. 

Great  Britain  has  been  a  large  importer  of  iron  ore  in  re- 
cent years  from  Spain,  Italy,  and  other  countries,  but  chiefly 
from  Spain.  In  1887  the  quantity  imported  amounted  to 
3,765,788  tons,  in  1888  to  3,562,071  tons,  in  1889  to  4,031,- 
265  tons,  and  in  1890  to  4,471,790  tons.  The  total  quantity 
of  iron  ore  mined  in  Great  Britain  in  1887  amounted  to 
13,098,041  tons,  in  1888  to  14,590,713  tons,  in  1889  to  14,- 
546,105  tons,  and  in  1890  to  13,780,767  tons.  Great  Britain, 
therefore,  now  imports  nearly  one-fourth  of  her  annual  sup- 
ply of  iron  ore.  The  sources  of  her  supply  of  foreign  ore 
in  1889  and  1890  and  the  quantities  and  values  of  the  im- 
ports in  these  two  years  were  as  follows. 


Gross  tons. 

Values. 

Gross  tons. 

Values. 

Australasia  

1,858 

£8,026 

3,475 

£15,266 

Greece  

79,007 

79,314 

112,764 

101,662 

Algeria  

205,670 

153,836 

237,609 

190,940 

Italy  

79,312 

68,542 

46,517 

,43,411 

Spain 

3  627  646 

2608856 

4,028,672 

3,129,656  . 

Turkey 

19588 

88,131 

18,968 

90,036 

Other  countries 

18,184 

17,900 

23,785 

25,085 

Total                                     

4  031,265 

£3,024  605 

4,471,790 

£3,596,056 

1890. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES. 


521 


Great  Britain  also  annually  imports  large  quantities  of 
cupreous  iron  pyrites,  from  which  she  obtains  purple  ore 
as  a  residuum  for  use  in  her  blast  furnaces.  She  obtained 
447,580  tons  of  purple  ore  from  this  source  in  1887,  464,- 
207  tons  in  1888,  483,257  tons  in  1889,  and  492,669  tons  in 
1890. 

Great  Britain's  exports  of  iron  ore  are  usually  only  nom- 
inal, but  in  1886  and  1887  they  attained  respectable  propor- 
tions. In  1886  they  amounted  to  70,527  tons,  of  which 
69,639  tons  were  sent  to  the  United  States.  In  1887  they 
amounted  to  56,394  tons,  of  which  53,817  tons  were  sent  to 
the  United  States.  They  have  since  greatly  declined. 

As  the  prosperity  of  the  British  iron  trade  rests  so  com- 
pletely upon  the  abundant  home  supply  of  bituminous  coal 
the  statistics  of  its  production  also  properly  find  a  place  in 
these  pages.  The  following  table  shows  the  annual  produc- 
tion of  coal  in  Great  Britain  from  1855  to  1890.  This  table 
has  been  carefully  revised  for  these  pages  by  Mr.  Meade. 


Years. 

Gross  tons. 

Years. 

Gross  tons. 

Years. 

Gross  tons. 

1855 

64  453  079 

1867 

104  500  480 

1879 

133  720  393 

1856  

66  645  450 

1868 

103  141  157 

1880 

146  969  409 

1857  .  '..   . 

65  394  707 

1869 

107  427  557 

1881 

154  184  300 

1858  '.  

65  008  649 

1870 

110  431  192 

1882 

156  499  977 

1859  

71  979  765 

1871 

117  352  028 

1883 

163  737  327 

1860  .  . 

80  042  698 

1872 

123  497  316 

1884 

160  757  779 

1861  

84  013  941 

1873 

128  680,131 

1885 

159  351  418 

1862  

81  638  338 

1874 

126  590  108 

1886 

157  518482 

1863  

86,292,215 

1875 

133,306,485 

1887  . 

162  119  812 

1864  

92,787,873 

1876 

134,125,166 

1888 

169  935,219 

1865  

98,150,587 

1877.... 

134,179  968 

1889  

176,916  724 

1866 

101  630  544 

1878 

132  612  063 

1890 

181  614  288 

A  steady  decline  in  the  production  of  coal  in  Great  Britain 
from  1883  to  1886  will  be  noticed,  but  in  1887  the  production 
increased,  in  1888  and  1889  it  still  further  increased,  and  in 
1890  it  reached  the  astonishing  total  of  181,614,288  tons. 

Germany  has  for  a  long  time  been  third  in  the  list  of 
iron  and  steel  producing  countries,  the  United  States  and 
Great  Britain  being  first  and  second.  The  growth  of  Germa- 
ny's iron  and  steel  industries  in  recent  years  has  been  rapid. 
The  following  table,  which  has  been  carefully  revised  for 
these  pages  by  Dr.  Hermann  Wedding,  of  Berlin,  shows  the 
production  of  pig  iron  in  Germany  and  the  Grand  Duchy 


522  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

of  Luxemburg,  included  in  the  Zollverein,  from  1844  to  1890. 


Years. 

Metric  tons. 

Years. 

Metric  tons. 

Years. 

Metric  tons. 

1844  

171,000 

1869  

1  413,029 

1880 

2  729  038 

1854  

369  000 

1870 

1  391  124 

1881 

2  914  009 

1860  

599  087 

1871 

1  563  682 

1882 

3  380  806 

1861  

591  593 

1872 

1  988  394 

1883 

3  469  719 

1862  

696  350 

1873 

2  240  575 

1884 

3  600  612 

1863  

812  555 

1874  .. 

1  906  263 

1885 

3  687  433 

1864  

904,658 

1875  

2  029  389 

1886 

3  528  658 

1865  

988,191 

1876  

1  846  345 

1887 

4  023  953 

1866 

1  046  954 

1877 

1  934  726 

1888 

4  337  421 

1867  

1,113,606 

1878  

2  147  641 

1889 

4  524  558 

1868  

1.264.347 

1879.... 

2.226.587 

iKon 

4  fi37  9SQ 

In  1834,  ten  years  earlier  than  the  year  first  named  in 
the  table,  the  production  of  pig  iron  in  Germany  and  Lux- 
emburg was  only  110,000  metric  tons. 

As  the  iron  and  steel  industries  of  Germany  owe  their 
present  prominence  in  large  part  to  the  possession  by  Ger- 
many of  an  abundant  local  supply  of  mineral  fuel  we  give 
below  a  table,  also  verified  for  these  pages  by  Dr.  Wedding, 
showing  the  aggregate  production  of  both  coal  and  lignite  in 
Germany  from  185.3  to  1890. 


Years. 

Metric  tons. 

Years. 

Metric  tons. 

Years. 

Metric  tons. 

1853  

10,714,556 

1869  .  . 

34  343  913 

1880 

59  118  035 

1857  

14,867,121 

1870  

34  003  004 

1881 

61  540  485 

1860  ' 

16  730  492 

1871 

37  856  110 

1882 

65  378,211 

1861  .  . 

18  755  361 

!  1872 

42  324  467 

1883 

70  449  648 

1862  

20  660  677 

1873 

46  145  194 

1884 

72  113  820 

1863  

22,366,203 

1874  

46,658,145 

1885  

73  675  515 

1864  

25  612  899 

1  1875 

47  804  054 

1886 

73  682  584 

1865  
1866  

28,552,762 
28,162,805 

1876  
1877 

49,550,461 

48  229  882 

1887  

1888 

76,232,618 
81  960  083 

1867 

30  802  889 

1878 

50  519  899 

1889 

84  788  609 

1868 

32  879  123 

1879 

53  470  716 

1890 

89  051  527 

In  1848  the  total  production  of  coal  and  lignite  in  Ger- 
many was  only  5,800,985  tons. 

Germany .  and  Luxemburg  produced  10,664,307  tons  of 
iron  ore  in  1888,  11,002,187  tons  in  1889,  and  11,409,625  tons 
in  1890.  The  imports  of  iron  ore  into  Germany  and  Luxem- 
burg, chiefly  from  Spain,  amounted  to  1,163,373  tons  in  1888, 
1,234,789  tons  in  1889,  and  1,522,181  tons  in  1890  ;  and  the 
exports,  chiefly  from  Lothringen,  amounted  to  2,211,820  tons 
in  1888,  2,179,836  tons  in  1889,  and  2,208,120  tons  in  1890. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES. 


523 


In  the  following  table  we  give  the  statistics  of  the  pro- 
duction of  basic  steel  by  countries  in  the  last  four  years. 


Countries—  Gross  tons. 

1887. 

1888. 

1889. 

1890. 

England  . 

364  526 

408  594 

493  919 

503  400 

Germany, 



Luxemburg,  and  Austria  

1,102,496 
176  500 

1,276,070 
229  333 

1,481,642 

222  39'> 

1,695,472 
240  638 

Belgium, 

Russia,  and  the  United  States  

60,959 

46,237 

76,599 

163,573 

Total 

1  704  481 

1  953234 

2  274  552 

2  603  083 

The  increased  production  of  basic  steel  in  1890  over  1889 
was  328,531  gross  tons.  The  total  production  of  basic  steel 
since  the  invention  of  the  basic  process  down  to  the  close 
of  1890  is  reported  to  have  .been  13,448,000  gross  tons. 

Of  the  total  production  of  basic  steel  in  1890  there  wrere 
made  by  the  basic  Bessemer  process  2,232,639  tons  and  by 
the  basic  open-hearth  process  370,444  tons.  Of  the  basic 
Bessemer  production  1,593,148  tons  contained  under  .17  per 
cent,  of  carbon,  and  of  the  basic  open-hearth  production 
298,867  tons  contained  under  .17  per  cent,  of  carbon. 

In  the  production  of  2,603,083  tons  of  basic  steel  in  1890 
there  were  also  produced  623,000  tons  of  slag,  containing 
about  36  per  cent,  of  phosphate  of  lime,  nearly  the  whole 
of  which  was  used  as  a  fertilizer. 

The  position  of  the  United  States  among  iron  and  steel 
producing  countries  at  the  .present  time  is  correctly  indicat- 
ed in  the  following  table  of  the  world's  production  of  pig 
iron  and  steel  of  all  kinds,  which  we  have  compiled  from  the 
latest  and  most  reliable  statistics  that  are  accessible.  Most 
of  the  details  are  derived  from  official  sources,  while  only 
those  relating  to  "  other  countries  "  have  been  estimated.  This 
table  places  the  world's  production  of  pig  iron  in  1890  at 
26,968,468  tons,  and  the  world's  production  of  steel  in  that 
year  at.  12, 151, 255  tons.  The  percentage  of  pig  iron  produc- 
ed by  the  United  States  was  34.1,  and  its  percentage  of  steel 
was  35.2.  Tons  of  2,240  pounds  are  used  in  giving  the 
statistics  of  Great  Britain,  the  United  States,  Canada,  and 
"  other  countries,"  and  metric  tons  of  2,204  pounds  for  all 
the  Continental  countries  of  Europe.  As  the  difference  be- 
tween the  gross  ton  and  the  metric  ton  is  so  trifling  it  is 
not  necessary  to  change  official  figures. 


524 


THE    MANUFACTURE   OF 


Pig 

iron. 

Bfc 

:el. 

Years. 

Tons. 

Years. 

Tons. 

United  States  

1890 

9  202  703 

1890 

4  277  071 

Great  Britain  

1890  

7904214 

1890 

3  679  043 

Germany  and  Luxemburg  
France  

1890  
1890 

4,637,239 
1  970  160 

1890  

1890 

2,161,821 
704  013 

Belgium  

1890 

JZ81.958 

1890 

239  266 

Austria  and  Hungary  

1890 

925  308 

1890 

440  605 

Russia  (including  Siberia)  

1889  

745,872 

1889  

263719 

Sweden  

1890 

456  102 

1890 

169  986 

Spain  

1888      

232000 

1888 

28  645 

Italy  

1889 

13473 

1889 

157  899 

Canada  

1890      

19439 

1889 

24  887 

Other  countries 

1890 

80  000 

1890 

5  000 

Total  . 

26  968  468 

12  151  255 

. 

Percentage  of  the  United  States 

34  1 

35  2 



' 

In  the  following  table  we  also  give  the  latest  accessible 
information  concerning  the  production  of  coal  and  iron  ore 
throughout  the  world.  The  percentage  of  production  of  coal 
by  the  United  States  is  seen  by  this  table  to  have  been  25.7 
and  its  percentage  of  production  of  iron  ore  is  seen  to  have 
been  31.4. 


Countries. 

Iron  ore. 

Coal. 

Years. 

Tons. 

Years. 

Tons. 

United  States  
Great  Britain 

1890  
1890  

18,000,000 
13,780,767 
11,409,625 
2,579,465 
202,431 
2,200,000 
1,433,513 
941,241' 
4,500,000 
173,489 
68,313 
2,000,000 

1889    .  .  . 

126097  779 

1890  
1890  
1890  

1  181,614,288 
|    89,051,527 
25,836,953 

Germany  and  Luxemburg 

1890  

France  

1887  

Belgium 

1889 

1890 

90  343  495 

Austria  and  Hungary  
Russia  (including  Siberia) 

1890  

1888 

1889 

25  326  417 

1889 

.      1      6,228  000 

Sweden 

1890 

1890 

1         258000 

Spain 

1888  

1888  
1889  

1,203,119 
j         390,320 

Italy   

1889  

Canada  

1890  

1890  
1890  

1      2,783,626 
.11,200,000 

Other  countries  (including  Cuba).... 

1890  

Total  

57,288,844 

1  490,333,524 

Percentage  of  the  United  States 

31.4 

25.7 

It  is  not  pretended  that  all  of  the  details  in  the  above 
tables  are  absolutely  accurate ;  at  the  present  stage  of  statis- 
tical inquiry  even  in  highly  civilized  countries  this  would 
be  impossible.  But  they  are  substantially  accurate. 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  525 


CHAPTER   LXII. 

SOME   OF   THE   IMPORTANT  USES  OF  IRON  AND 
STEEL  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

IN  Ure's  Dictionary  of  Arts,  Manufactures,  and  Mines  we 
find  this  comprehensive  and  eloquent  description  of  iron : 
"  Every  person  knows  the  manifold  uses  of  this  truly  precious 
metal.  It  is  capable  of  being  cast  in  moulds  of  any  form ;  of 
being  drawn  out  into  wires  of  any  desired  strength  or  fine- 
ness ;  of  being  extended  into  -plates  or  sheets  ;  of  being  bent 
in  every  direction ;  of  being  sharpened,  hardened,  and  soften- 
ed at  pleasure.  Iron  accommodates  itself  to  all  our  wants, 
our  desires,  and  even  our  caprices ;  it  is  equally  serviceable  to 
the  arts,  the  sciences,  to  agriculture,  and  war ;  the  same  ore 
furnishes  the  sword,  the  ploughshare,  the  scythe,  the  prun- 
ing-hook,  the  needle,  the  graver,  the  spring  of  a  watch  or  of 
a  carriage,  the  chisel,  the  chain,  the  anchor,  the  compass,  the 
cannon,  and  the  bomb.  It  is  a  medicine  of  much  virtue,  and 
the  only  metal  friendly  to  the  human  frame." 

The  people  of  the  United  States  are  the  largest  per  capita 
consumers  of  iron  and  steel  in  the  world,  and  of  all  nations 
they  are  also  the  largest  aggregate  consumers  of  these  prod- 
ucts. Our  annual  consumption  of  iron  and  steel  has  for  sev- 
eral years  averaged  over  300  pounds  for  every  man,  woman, 
and  child  in  the  United  States.  Great  Britain  makes  about 
as  much  iron  and  steel  as  we  do,  but  she  exports  about  one- 
half  of  all  the  iron  and  steel  that  she  makes,  much  of  it  in 
the  form  of  iron  and  steel  ships,  machinery,  cutlery,  etc.  We 
estimate  Great  Britain's  annual  home  consumption  of  iron 
and  steel  in  recent  years  to  be  less  than  275  pounds  per  cap- 
ita. No  other  European  country  equals  Great  Britain  in 
the  per  capita  consumption  of  iron  and  steel. 

A  simple  enumeration  of  some  of  the  more  important 
uses  to  which  iron  and  steel  are  applied  by  our  people  will 
show  how  prominent  is  the  part  these  metals  play  in  the 
development  of  American  civilization  and  in  the  advance- 
ment of  our  greatness  and  power  as  a  nation. 


526  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

We  have  built  more  miles  of  railroad  than  the  whole  of 
Europe,  and  have  used  in  their  construction  as  many  rails, 
and  now  use  in  their  equipment  fully  as  many  railroad  cars 
and  locomotives.  At  the  close  of  1889  this  country  had 
161,319  miles  of  railroad,  Europe  had  136,859  miles,  and  all 
the  rest  of  the  world  had  71,965  miles.  The  United  States 
had  25  miles  of  railroad  to  every  10,000  of  population,  while 
Europe  had  a  little  more  than  4  miles  to  the  same  popula- 
tion. Railroads,  it  is  well  known,  annually  consume  in  rails, 
bridges,  cars,  and  locomotives  about  one-half  of  the  world's 
total  production  of  iron  and  steel.  The  street  railway  is 
an  American  invention,  and  we  are  far  in  advance  of  every 
other  nation  in  its  use.  We  were  also  the  first  nation  in  the 
world  to  introduce  elevated  railways  especially  to  facilitate 
travel  in  large  cities.  Beauty  of  design,  fitness  of  parts,  and 
strength  of  materials  have  been  so  perfectly  combined  in  the 
construction  of  our  elevated  railways  as  to  excite  the  ad- 
miration of  all  who  behold  them.  We  are  the  foremost  of 
all  nations  in  the  use  of  iron  and  steel  in  bridge-building 
for  railroads  and.  ordinary  highways,  and  the  lightness  and 
gracefulness  of  our  bridges  are  nowhere  equaled,  while  their 
strength  and  adaptability  to  the  uses  for  which  they  are  re- 
quired are  nowhere  surpassed.  The  steel  wire  in  the  Brook- 
lyn bridge,  which  is  in  many  respects  the  most  notable  bridge 
in  the  world,  is  all  of  American  manufacture. 

In  the  use  of  iron  for  water,  sewage,  and  illuminating  gas 
pipes  we  are  far  in  advance  of  every  other  nation,  because 
our  small  cities  and  country  towns  now  quickly  adopt  all 
the  improvements  of  large  cities. 

;We  make  more  iron  stoves  for  heating  halls  and  dwell- 
ings and  for  the  purposes  of  the  kitchen  than  all  the  rest  of 
the  world,  and  in  the  use  of  kitchen  ranges  we  are  in  ad- 
vance of  every  other  nation.  Our  household  stoves,  both  for 
heating  and  cooking,  are  works  of  real  art  as  well  as  of  util- 
ity. They  are  ornaments  of  American  homes  instead  of  be- 
ing conveniences  simply.  Our  heating  stoves  are  especially 
handsome,  bright,  cheerful,  clean,  and  conducive  to  health. 
The  heating  of  public  and  private  buildings  with  hot-air 
heaters  has  long  been  more  popular  in  our  country  than  in 
any  other  country,  but  in  late  years  steam  and  hot-water  pipes 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  527 

are  rapidly  coming  into  use  as  rivals  of  hot-air  flues.  Cook- 
ing and  other  domestic  utensils  of  iron  have  always,  even  in 
colonial  days,  been  freely  used  in  American  households. 

We  make  liberal  use  of  both  cast  and  wrought  iron  and 
steel  in  the  construction  of  public  and  private  buildings. 
Our  use  of  iron  and  steel  for  these  purposes  has  rapidly  in- 
creased in  late  years,  and  in  much  of  our  work  of  this  char- 
acter we  have  given  truly  artistic  effects  to  these  metals.  We 
probably  excel  all  nations  in  the  use  of  iron  and  steel  for 
ornamental  purposes  in  connection  with  masonry,  brick-work, 
and  wood-work.  Fine  illustrations  of  the  artistic  combina- 
tion of  iron  with  other  materials  ten  years  ago  may  be  seen 
in  the  interior  of  the  new  State  Department  building  at 
Washington  and  in  the  interior  of  the  passenger  station 
of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  at  Philadelphia,  while  upon 
every  hand  are  seen  later  illustrations  of  our  artistic  uses 
of  iron  and  steel. 

We  consume  large  quantities  of  wire  rope  in  our  extend- 
ed and  varied  mining  operations,  and  we  lead  the  world  in 
the  use  of  Bessemer  steel  wire  for  fencing  purposes.  We  have 
more  miles  of  telegraph  wire  in  use  than  any  other  country. 
The  electric  telegraph  and  telephone  are  American  inven- 
tions ;  barbed  wire  fencing  is  also  an  American  invention. 
Large  quantities  of  iron  and  steel  are  now  required  annually 
for  the  electrical  machinery  which  is  in  general  use  in  this 
country  in  the  production  of  light  and  power. 

We  have  made  rapid  progress  in  late  years  in  the  con- 
struction of  iron  and  steel  ships  and  lake  and  river  steam- 
ers, and  we  would  have  made  much  greater  progress  if  the 
same  encouragement  that  has  been  given  by  other  nations 
to  their  shipping  interests  had  been  given  to  ours.  Our 
new  navy  is  being  built  almost  wholly  of  steel. 

We  use  irnmense  quantities  of  plate  iron  and  steel  in  the 
storage,  transportation,  and  refining  of  petroleum,  in  the  pro- 
duction of  which  nature  has  given  us  a  great  advantage. 
The  oil  wells  themselves  yearly  require  thousands  of  tons 
of  iron  and  steel  pipes  for  tubing.  Our  natural  gas  wells 
also  create  a  large  demand  for  iron  and  steel  pipes.  We 
make  liberal  use  of  plate  and  sheet  iron  and  steel  in  the 
construction  of  the  chimneys  of  steamboats  on  our  lakes 


528  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

and  rivers,  and  in  the  construction  of  factory  and  rolling- 
mill  chimneys  and  the  stacks  of  blast  furnaces.  The  jackets 
of  hot-blast  stoves  also  require  large  quantities  of  plate  iron 
and  steel  in  their  construction.  American  planished  sheet 
iron  has  almost  entirely  superseded  Russia  sheet  iron  in  our 
markets.  We  use  it  for  locomotive  jackets,  in  the  manufact- 
ure of  stoves  and  stove-pipe,  and  for  many  other  purposes. 
We  are  the  largest  consumers  of  tinplates  in  the  world,  Great 
Britain,  their  principal  manufacturer,  sending  us  annually 
more  than  three-fourths  of  her  total  exports  ;  indeed  we  con- 
sume more  tinplates  than  all  the  rest  of  the  world.  We  are 
also  large  consumers  of  galvanized  sheet  iron  and  steel  for 
spouting,  coal-buckets,  portable  heaters,  and  other  purposes. 

Our  portable  and  stationary  steam  engines  create  a  con- 
stant demand  for  large  quantities  of  iron  and  steel.  Porta- 
ble engines  are  widely  used  in  the  lumber  districts  of  this 
country  and  in  threshing  grain  upon  American  farms.  Our 
extensive  mining  operations  require  the  most  powerful  en- 
gines, while  our  manufacturing  enterprises  and  the  steam 
vessels  on  our  lakes  and  rivers  and  on  the  ocean  require  both 
large  and  small  engines.  Steam  cranes  and  elevators,  steam 
dredges,  steam  hammers,  and  steam  and  hydraulic  pumps 
create  a  market  for  large  quantities  of  iron  and  steel.  Our 
beautiful  steam  fire-engines  are  the  product  of  American 
taste  and  skill,  if  they  are  not  strictly  an  American  inven- 
tion, and  we  annually  make  large  numbers  for  home  use 
and  for  exportation.  Anchors  and  chains,  cotton-presses  and 
cotton-ties,  sugar-pans  and  salt-pans,  and  general  foundry 
and  machine  work  require  large  quantities  annually  of  both 
iron  and  steel.  We  make  our  own  cotton  and  woolen  manu- 
facturing machinery,  and  nearly  all  the  other  machinery 
that  we  use.  The  manufacture  of  the  printing  presses  of 
the  country  consumes  immense  quantities  of  iijon  and  steel. 
No  other  country  makes  such  free  use  of  the  printing  press 
as  this  country.  We  are  the  leading  agricultural  country 
of  the  world,  and  hence  are  the  largest  consumers  of  agri- 
cultural implements  ;  but  we  are  also  in  advance  of  every 
other  country  in  the  use  of  agricultural  machinery,  the  best 
of  which  we  have  invented. 

We  lead  all  nations  in  the  manufacture  of  cut  nails,  wire 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  529 

nails,  and  spikes.  Having  a  larger  and  more  rapidly-increas- 
ing population  than  any  other  country  that  is  noted  for  its 
consumption  of  iron  and  steel  we  are  consequently  the 
largest  consumers  of  nails  and  spikes  in  the  construction  of 
dwellings  and  public  buildings,  stores,  warehouses,  and  like 
structures.  The  nail-cutting  machine  is  an  American  inven- 
tion. Our  manufactures  of  scales  and  balances,  letter-press- 
es, burglar-proof  and  fire-proof  safes,  sewing-machines,  and 
wagons  and  carriages  consume  iron  and  steel  in  large  quan- 
tities. Sewing-machines  are  an  American  invention.  We 
use  more  pleasure  carriages  in  proportion  to  population  than 
Great  Britain,  France,  Germany,  or  any  other  country,  and 
we  also  use  many  bicycles.  Large  quantities  of  iron  and  steel 
are  used  for  fire-arms,  sewer  and  other  gratings,  street-cross- 
ings, iron  pavements,  lamp-posts,  posts  and  frames  for  awn- 
ings, posts  for  electric  lights,  fire-plugs,  fire-escape  ladders, 
builders'  hardware  and  all  sorts  of  small  hardware,  horse- 
shoes and  horseshoe  nails,  wire  rope  for  miscellaneous  pur- 
poses,tbarrel  and  baling  hoops,  cots  and  bedsteads,  burial 
caskets,  chairs  and  settees,  woven-wire  mattresses,  screens,  wire 
netting,  wire  mats,  wire  belting,  railings,  and  street  letter- 
boxes. In  the  manufacture  of  machine  and  hand  tools  and 
general  cutlery  we  are  excelled  by  no  other  country,  and  in 
the  use  of  machine  tools  we  are  in  advance  of  every  other 
country.  No  other  country  makes  such  free  use  of  labor- 
saving  inventions  of  all  kinds  as  this  country,  most  of  which 
require  iron  and  steel  in  their  manufacture.  Our  saws  and 
axes  especially  enjoy  a  world-wide  reputation,  and  so  also 
do  American  shovels.  Not  the  least  important  use  to  which 
iron  and  steel  are  put  in  this  country  is  in  the  extension  of 
the  iron  industry  itself,  every  blast  furnace,  rolling  mill,  and 
steel  works  that  is  erected  first  consuming  large  quantities 
of  these  products  before  contributing  to  their  general  supply. 
In  the  substitution  of  steel  for  iron  this  coimtry  has  made 
rapid  progress,  especially  in  the  construction  and  equipment 
of  its  railroads.  During  the  past  ten  years  virtually  all  the 
rails  that  have  been  laid  on  American  railroads  have  been 
made  of  Bessemer  steel.  The  manufacture  of  iron  rails  in 
this  country  is  practically  ended,  steel  rails  now  costing  much 
less  than  iron  rails.  On  most  American  railroads  the  boilers 


530  THE    MANUFACTURE    OP 

of  all  new  locomotives  are  now,  required  to  be  made  of  steel, 
and  the  tendency  is  toward  the  exclusive  use*  of  steel  for 
locomotive  boilers  and  its  general  use  for  stationary  and 
marine  boilers.  The  tires  of  American  locomotives  are  now 
made  exclusively  of  steel,  and  the  fire-boxes  of  our  locomo- 
tives are  generally  made  of  steel.  The  steel  used  in  the  con- 
struction of  American  locomotives  is  now  chiefly  produced  by 
the  open-hearth  process.  We  have  built  many  steel  bridges, 
and  there  is  a  marked  tendency  to  substitute  steel  for  iron 
in  bridge-building.  In  shipbuilding  we  commenced  the  use 
of  steel  as  a  substitute  for  iron  several  years  ago.  The  use 
of  rolled  steel  for  building  purposes  in  this  country  is  mak- 
ing rapid  headway.  Steel  is  now  largely  used  in  the  manu- 
facture of  wire  for  miscellaneous  purposes,  and  for  car  and 
carriage  axles,  carriage  tires,  screws,  bolts,  rivets,  and  many 
other  articles  for  which  iron  was  formerly  used.  All  of  our 
barbed  wire  fencing  is  made  of  steel.  Until  recently  steel 
had  not  been  much  used  in  this  country  for  any  kind  of 
nails,  but  it  is  now  in  general  use  in  their  manufacture. 

Mention  has  been  made  of  the  artistic  finish  of  some  of 
our  iron  and  steel  work,  but  the  subject  seems  worthy  of  fur- 
ther notice.  It  is  not  only  in  stove-founding,  in  the  grace- 
ful designs  of  bridges  and  elevated  railways,  and  in  the  deli- 
cate combination  of  iron  and  steel  with  other  materials  in 
the  construction  and  ornamentation  of  buildings  that  Amer- 
ican ironworkers  have  displayed  both  taste  and  skill.  The 
fine  arts  themselves  are  being  enriched  by  our  ironworking 
countrymen.  An  iron  foundry  at  Chelsea,  in  Massachusetts, 
has  reproduced  in  iron  castings  various  works  of  art  with 
all  the  fidelity  and  delicacy  of  Italian  iron  founders.  The 
most  delicate  antique  patterns  have  been  successfully  copied. 
Shields  representing  mythological  groups  and  classic  events, 
medallions  containing  copies  of  celebrated  portraits,  panels 
containing  flowers  and  animals,  an  imitation  of  a  Japanese 
lacquer  tray  one-sixteenth  of  an  inch  thick,  and  a  triumphal 
procession  represented  on  a  large  salver  comprise  some  of  the 
work  of  the  Chelsea  foundry.  Some  of  the  castings  have 
been  colored  to  represent  bronze  and  others  to  represent  steel, 
while  others  again  preserve  the  natural  color  of  the  iron. 
The  bronzed  castings  resemble  beaten  work  in  copper.  Amer- 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  531 

ican  pig  iron  has  been  chiefly  used.  Other  foundries  have 
produced  similar  castings. 

Until  recently  we  conspicuously  fell  behind  European 
countries  in  the  use  of  iron  and  steel  for  military  purposes. 
We  maintain  only  a  small  standing  army,  and  hence  still 
have  but  little  use  for  iron  and  steel  for  the  supply  of  this 
branch  of  the  public  service.  But  we  are  now  building  a 
large  navy,  which  will  soon  compare  favorably  in  the  num- 
ber and  size  of  its  vessels  and  in  their  equipment  with  the 
navies  of  Europe.  We  are  behind  other  countries  in  the  use 
of  iron  and  steel  sleepers  for  railroad  tracks.  We  yet  have 
an  abundance  of  timber  for  railroad  cross-ties,  and  hence  do 
not  need  to  substitute  either  iron  or  steel  cross-ties.  Except 
as  an  experiment  there  is  not  an  iron  or  steel  cross-tie  in  use 
in  this  country.  We  have  long  used  coal  cars  made  of  plate 
iron,  but  recently  we  have  commenced  the  building  of  iron 
and  steel  cars  for  the  transportation  of  ordinary  freight.  We 
still  import  many  blacksmiths'  anvils,  their  manufacture  be- 
ing a  branch  of  the  iron  industry  to  which  we  have  not 
yet  given  adequate  attention.  Anvils  of  the  best  quality  are, 
however,  made  in  this  country.  A  far  more  serious  hiatus 
in  our  iron  and  steel  industries  existed  until  recently  in  the 
total  absence  of  the  manufacture  of  tinplates,  which  are  al- 
most entirely  composed  of  sheet  iron  or  steel.  As  we  can 
import  the  crude  tin  as  easily  as  we  import  other  commodi- 
ties our  failure  to  manufacture  tinplates  must  be  ascribed 
to  the  only  true  cause,  our  inability  to  manufacture  sheet 
iron  and  steel  and  coat  them  with  tin  as  cheaply  as  this  is 
done  by  British  manufacturers.  Tin  ore  has  been  discover- 
ed in  this  country  in  several  places  and  is  now  being  smelt- 
ed, and  it  is  not  improbable  that  block  tin  may  yet  be  pro- 
duced at  home  in  sufficiently  large  quantities  to  supply  any 
domestic  demand  for  it  that  may  be  created.  The  passage 
of  the*  McKinley  tariff  act  in  1890  has  led  to  the  establish- 
ment of  many  tinplate  enterprises  in  our  country  in  1891. 

Ojther  uses  of  iron  and  steel  in  the  United  States  might 
be  discovered  upon  further  reflection  and  investigation,  but 
enough  particulars  have  been  recited  to  show  to  how  many 
uses  these  metals  are  applied  and  how  large  is  their  part 
in  meeting  the  numerous  wants  of  our  American  civilization. 


532  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

• 

CHAPTER   LXIII. 
CONCLUSION. 

IN  reviewing  the  preceding  pages  the  most  striking  fact 
which  presents  itself  for  our  consideration  is  the  great  stride 
made  by  the  world's  iron  and  steel  industries  in  the  last 
hundred  years.  In  1788  there  were  only  85  active  furnaces 
in  Great  Britain,  and  their  total  production  was  only  68,300 
gross  tons  of  pig  iron.  In  1882  Great  Britain  had  929  fur- 
naces, many  of  which  were  idle,  and  their  production  was 
8,586,680  tons,  which  has  not  since  been  exceeded.  In  1810 
the  production  of  pig  iron  in  the  United  States  was  53,908 
gross  tons,  and  in  1890  the  production  was  9,202,703  tons. 
A  hundred  years  ago  there  were  no  railroads  in  the  world 
for  the  transportation  of  freight  and  passengers.  Iron  ships 
were  unknown  ;  there  were  no  steamships  ;  and  all  the  iron 
bridges  in  the  world  could  be  c«*nnted  on  the  fingers  of 
one  hand.  Without  railroads  and  their  cars  and  locomo- 
tives, and  without  iron  ships  and  iron  bridges,  the  world 
needed  but  little  iron.  Steel  was  still  less  a  necessity,  and 
such  small  quantities  of  it  as  were  made  were  mainly  used 
in  the  manufacture  of  swords  and  tools  with  cutting  edges. 
It  was  at  the  beginning  of  the  railroad  era,  at  the  close  of 
the  first  quarter  of  the  present  century,  that  the  first  marked 
increase  in  the  use  of  iron  and  steel  in  modern  times  took 
place.  This  was  in  1825,  just  sixty-six  years  ago,  when  the 
Stockton  and  Darlington  Railroad  in  England  was  opened. 
The  invention  of  the  steam  engine  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
preceding  century  made  the  railroad  era  possible. 

The  great  progress  made  by  the  world's  iron  and  steel 
industries  in  the  last  hundred  years  is  as  plainly  marked  in 
the  improvement  of  the  processes  of  manufacture  as  in  the 
increased  demand  for  iron  and  steel  products.  A  little  over 
a  hundred  years  ago  all  bar  iron  was  laboriously  shaped 
under  the  tilt-hammer  and  the  trip-hammer ;  none  of  it  was 
rolled.  Nor  was  iron  of  any  kind  refined  at  that  time  in 
the  puddling  furnace ;  it  was  all  refined  in  forges,  and  much 


IRON   IN   ALL  AGES.  533 

of  it  was  made  in  primitive  bloomary  forges  directly  from 
the  ore.  Cort  had  just  perfected  the  rolling  mill  and  the 
puddling  furnace.  Only  a  few  years  ago  a  prejudice  still 
existed  in  favor  of  hammered  bar  iron.  Nearly  all  the  blast 
furnaces  of  a  hundred  years  ago  were  blown  with  leather 
or  wooden  bellows  by  water-power,  and  the  fuel  used  in 
them  was  chiefly  charcoal.  Steam-power,  cast-iron  blowing 
cylinders,  and  mineral  fuel  had  just  been  introduced  in 
Europe,  but  not  in  this  country. ]  Sixty-five  years  ago  heat- 
ed air  had  not  anywhere  been  used  in  the  blowing  of  blast 
furnaces,  and  fifty-six  years  ago  anthracite  coal  had  not  been 
used  in  them,  except  experimentally.  Forty  years  ago  the 
Bessemer  process  for  the  manufacture  of  steel  had  not  been 
heard  of,  and  the  open-hearth  process  for  the  manufacture 
of  steel  had  not  been  made  a  practical  success.  Thirty-five 
years  ago  the  regenerative  gas  furnace  had  just  been  invented. 
The  nineteenth  century  has  been  the  most  prolific  of  all  the 
centuries  in  inventions  which  have  improved  the  methods 
of  manufacturing  iron  and  steel  and  which  have  facilitated 
their  production  in  large  quantities. 

The  next  most  important  fact  that  is  presented  in  the 
preceding  chapters  is  the  astonishing  progress  which  the  iron 
and  steel  industries  of  the  United  States  have  made  within 
the  last  thirty  years.  During  this  period  we  have  not  only 
utilized  all  cotemporaneous  improvements  in  the  manufact- 
ure of  iron  and  steel,  but  we  have  shown  a  special  aptitude, 
or  genius,  for  the  use  of  such  improvements  as  render  pos- 
sible the  production  of  iron  and  steel  in  large  quantities. 
Enterprising  and  progressive  as  the  people  of  this  country 
have  always  been  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  and  steel  they 
have  shown  in  the  last  thirty  years  that  they  have  in  all  re- 
spects been  fully  alive  to  the  iron  and  steel  requirements  of 
our  surprising  national  development.  If  we  had  not  applied 
immense  blowing  engines  and  the  best  hot-blast  stoves  to  our 
blast  furnaces  our  present  large  production  of  pig  iron  would 
have  been  impossible.  If  we  had  not  built  numerous  large 
rolling  mills  and  steel  works  we  could  not  have  had  a  suf- 
ficient supply  of  plate  iron  and  steel  for  locomotive  and 
other  boilers,  and  for  the  hulls  and  frames  of  ships,  nor  for 
oil  tanks,  nails  and  spikes,  and  other  important  uses  ;  nor 


534  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF 

of  sheet  iron  and  steel  for  stoves,  the  coverings  for  locomo- 
tives, and  for  domestic  utensils ;  nor  of  beams,  tees,  angles, 
and  channel  iron  for  bridge-building  and  general  construction 
purposes  ;  nor  of  iron  rails  for  our  railroads  ;  nor  of  bar  iron 
and  rod  iron  for  a  thousand  uses.  If  we  had  not  promptly 
introduced  the  Bessemer  process  the  railroads  of  the  country 
could  not  have  been  cheaply  supplied  with  steel  rails,  and 
without  the  eighteen  million  tons  of  American  steel  rails 
which  have  been  laid  in  American  railroad  tracks  in  the 
past  twenty-four  years  our  leading  railroads  could  not  have 
carried  their  vast  tonnage  of  agricultural  and  other  products, 
for  iron  rails  could  not  have  endured  the  wear  of  this  ton- 
nage. If  we  had  not  established  the  manufacture  of  cruci- 
ble steel  and  introduced  the  open-hearth  process  there  would 
have  been  a  scarcity  of  steel  in  this  country  for  the  manu- 
facture of  agricultural  implements,  springs  for  railroad  pas- 
senger cars,  and  springs  and  tires  for  locomotives.  Foreign 
countries  could  not  in  late  years  have  supplied  our  extraor- 
dinary wants  for  pig  iron,  rolled  iron,  iron  and  steel  rails, 
and  crucible  and  open-hearth  steel ;  for,  if  there  were  no  other 
reasons,  the  naturally  conservative  character  of  their  people 
would  have  prevented  them  from  realizing  the  magnitude  of 
those  wants,  j  If  our  iron  and  steel  industries  had  not  been 
so  largely  developed  in  the  past  thirty  years  it  is  clear  that 
our  railroad  system  could  not  have  been  so  wonderfully  ex- 
tended and  strengthened  as  it  has  been ;  and  without  this 
extension  of  our  railroads  we  could  not  have  produced  our 
large  annual  surplus  of  agricultural  products  for  exporta- 
tion, nor  kept  the  price  of  these  products  to  our  own  peo- 
ple within  reasonable  limits ;  nor  could  our  population  have 
been  so  largely  increased  by  immigration  as  it  has  been. 

We  can  not  fully  comprehend  the  marvelous  nature  of 
the  changes  which  have  taken  place  in  the  iron  and  steel  in- 
dustries of  this  country  in  recent  years  unless  we  compare 
the  early  history  of  those  industries  with  their  present  devel- 
opment. 

In  Alexander  Hamilton's  celebrated  Report  on  tJie  Subject 
of  Manufactures,  presented  to  Congress  on  the  5th  of  Decem- 
ber, 1791,  just  one  hundred  years  ago,  it  was  stated  with  evi- 
dent satisfaction  that  "  the  United  States  already  in  a  great 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  535 

measure  supply  themselves  with  nails  and  spikes/'  so  unde- 
veloped and  primitive  was  our  iron  industry  at  that  time. 
In  the  same  report  it  was  stated  that  in  the  fiscal  year  which 
ended  on  the  30th  of  September,  1790,  our  imports  of  nails 
amounted  to  1,800,000  pounds.  In  1790  Morse's  Geography 
claimed,  in  a  description  of  New  Jersey,  that  "  in  the  whole 
State  it  is  supposed  there  is  yearly  made  about  1,200  tons  of 
bar  iron,  1,200  ditto  of  pigs,  and  80  of  nail  rods,"  and  in 
1802  it  was  boastingly  declared  in  a  memorial  to  Congress 
that  there  were  then  150  forges  in  New  Jersey,  "which  at 
a  moderate  calculation  would  produce  twenty  tons  of  bar  iron 
each  annually,  amounting  to  3,000  tons."  In  1891  there  were 
several  rolling  mills  in  New  Jersey  and  over  one  hundred  in 
the  United  States  each  of  which  could  produce  much  more 
bar  iron  in  three  months  than  all  of  the  150  forges  of  New 
Jersey  could  produce  in  a  year. 

Sixty  years  ago  the  American  blast  furnace  which  would 
make  four  tons  of  pig  iron  in  a  day,  or  28  tons  in  a  week, 
was  doing  good  work.  We  had  virtually  made  no  progress 
in  our  blast-furnace  practice  since  colonial  days.  In  1831 
it  was  publicly  proclaimed  with  some  exultation  that  "  one 
furnace  erected  in  Pennsylvania  in  1830  will  in  1831  make 
1,100  tons  of  pig  iron."  But,  as  George  Asmus  has  pleas- 
antly said,  "a  time  came  when  men  were  no  longer  satisfied 
with  these  little  smelting  pots,  into  which  a  gentle  stream  of 
air  was  blown  through  one  nozzle,  which  received  its  scanty 
supply  from  a  leather  bag,  squeezed  by  some  tired  water- 
wheel."  After  1840  our  blast-furnace  practice  gradually  im- 
proved, but  it  was  not  until  about  1850  that  any  furnace  in 
the  country  could  produce  150  tons  of  pig  iron  in  a  week, 
and  not  until  1865  that  this  product  had  ceased  to  excite  sur- 
prise. Ten  years  later,  in  1875,  we  had  several  furnaces  each 
of  which  could  make  700  tons  of  pig  iron  in  a  week ;  in 
1880  we  had  several  each  of  which  could  make  1,000  tons  in 
a  week  ;  in  1881  we  boasted  of  having  one  furnace  which 
had  made  224  tons  in  a  day,  1,357  tons  in  a  week,  and  5,598 
tons  in  a  month;  but  in  1890  we  had  one  furnace  which 
had  made  502.  gross  tons  in  a  day,  2,462  tons  in  a  week,  and 
10,603  tons  in  a  month. 

In  1810  we  produced  53,908  gross  tons  of  pig  iron  and 


536  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

cast  iron ;  in  1840  we  produced  286,903  tons  of  pig  iron ;  in 
1860  we  produced  821,223  tons ;  in  1880  we  produced  3,835,- 
191  tons;  and  in  1890  we  produced  9,202,703  tons. 

[In  his  Twenty  Years  of  Congress  Mr.  Elaine  says  that  in 
the  First  Congress,  in  1789,  Mr.  Clymer,  of  Pennsylvania, 
asked  for  a  protective  duty  on  steel,  stating  that  a  furnace 
in  Philadelphia  "  had  produced  300  tons  in  two  years,  and 
with  a  little  encouragement  would  supply  enough  for  the 
consumption  of  the  whole  Union."  In  1810,  eighty-one 
years  ago,  we  produced  only  917  tons  of  steel,  none  of  which 
was  crucible  steel.  In  1831,  twenty-one  years  later,  we  pro- 
duced only  2,000  tons  of  steel,  certainly  not  one  pound  of 
which  was  crucible  steel,  all  being  blister  steel.  So  humble 
were  our  attainments  as  steelmakers  in  1831  that  we  con- 
sidered it  a  cause  of  congratulation  that  "  American  compe- 
tition had  excluded  the  British  common  blister  steel  alto- 
gether." In  1849  Frederick  Overman  declared  that  "the 
United  States  are  at  present,  and  will  be  for  some  time  to 
come,  dependent  upon  other  countries  for  steel."  He  added 
that  "in  Pittsburgh  attempts  have  been  made  to  manufact- 
ure steel,  but  we  doubt  whether  an  article  of  good  quality 
can  ever  be  produced  in  that  region."  In  1882  we  had 
virtually  ceased  to  make  even  the  best  blister  steel,  better 
American  steel  having  taken  its  place,  and  in  that  year  we 
produced  1,736,692  gross  tons  of  steel  of  all  kinds,  75,972 
tons  of  which  were  crucible  steel.  In  1880  our  production 
of  Bessemer  steel  and  Bessemer  steel  rails  was  larger  than 
that  of  Great  Britain,  and  in  nearly  every  subsequent  year 
our  production  of  Bessemer  steel  ingots  has  continued  to  be 
larger,  while  our  production  of  Bessemer  steel  rails  has  in- 
variably been  larger.  In  1890  we  produced  a  grand  total  of 
4,277,071  gross  tons  of  steel,  which  was  far  more  than  Great 
Britain  had  ever  produced  in  one  year. 

It  was  not  until  1844  that  we  commenced  to  roll  any 
other  kind  of  rails  than  strap  rails  for  our  railroads.  In 
that  year  we  rolled  our  first  ton  of  T  rails.  In  1847  we  rolled 
40,966  gross  tons  of  rails ;  in  1849  the  production  fell  to  21,- 
712  tons ;  in  1854  it  increased  to  96,443  tons ;  and  in  1855  it 
was  hoped  by  the  officers  of  the  American  Iron  Association 
that  it  would  amount  to  135,000  tons,  but  this  hope  was  not 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  537 

quite  realized.  In  1880  we  produced  1,305,212  gross  tons  of 
rails,  nearly  two-thirds  of  which  were  steel  rails.  In  1881 
we  increased  our  production  of  rails  to  1,646,518  gross  tons, 
nearly  three-fourths  of  which  were  steel  rails.  In  1882  and 
1883  the  proportion  of  steel  rails  to  iron  rails  produced  was 
much  larger.  In  recent  years  we  have  rolled  steel  rails  al- 
most exclusively,  and  in  1887  our  total  production  of  rails 
of  all  kinds  amounted  to  2,139,640  gross  tons,  which  has  not 
since  been  exceeded  owing  to  the  decline  in  the  building  of 
new  railroads.  , 

Although  this  country  can  not  produce  iron  and  steel 
as  cheaply  as  European  countries  which  possess  the  advanta- 
ges of  cheap  labor  and  proximity  of  raw  materials  it  is  not 
excelled  by  any  other  country  in  the  skill  which  it  displays 
or  the  mechanical  and  scientific  economies  which  it  practices 
in  any  branch  of  their  manufacture,  while  in  certain  leading 
branches  it  has  displayed  superior  skill  and  shown  superior 
aptitude  for  economical  improvements.  Our  blast-furnace 
practice  is  the  best  in  the  world,  and  it  is  so  chiefly  because 
we  use  powerful  blowing  engines  and  the  best  hot-blast 
stoves,  possess  good  fuel,  and  carefully  select  our  ores.  The 
excellent  quality  of  our  pig  iron  is  universally  conceded. 
Our  Bessemer-steel  practice  is  also  the  best  in  the  world. 
We  produce  much  more  Bessemer  steel  and  roll  more  Besse- 
mer-steel rails  in  a  given  time  with  a  given  amount  of  ma- 
chinery, technically  termed  a  plant,  than  any  of  our  Euro- 
pean rivals.  No  controversy  concerning  the  relative  wearing 
qualities  of  European  and  American  steel  rails  now  exists, 
and  no  controversy  concerning  the  quality  of  American  Bes- 
semer ores  ever  has  existed.  We  experience  no  difficulty  in 
the  manufacture  of  open-hearth*  steel  in  the  Siemens-Mar- 
tin or  Pernot  furnace,  and  our  steel  which  is  thus  produced 
is  in  general  use  side  by  side  with  crucible  steel.  In  the 
manufacture  of  crucible  steel  our  achievements  are  in  the 
highest  degree  creditable.  In  only  one  respect  can  it  be  said 
that  in  its  manufacture  we  fall  behind  any  other  country ; 
we  have  not  paid  that  attention  to  the  production  of  fine  cut- 
lery steel  which  Great  Britain  has  done.  This  is,  however, 
wholly  due  to  commercial  and  not  to  mechanical  reasons. 
American  crucible  steel  is  now  used  without  prejudice  in  the 


538  THE    MANUFACTURE    OF 

manufacture  of  all  kinds  of  surgical  instruments  and  dental 
tools,  and  in  the  manufacture  of  many  other  articles  for 
which  the  best  kinds  of  steel  are  required. 

In  the  quantity  of  open-hearth  and  crucible  steel  produced 
in  a  given  time  by  a  given  plant  we  are  certainly  abreast  of 
all  rivals.  Our  rolling-mill  practice  is  fully  equal  to  the  best 
in  Europe.  The  quality  of  our  rolled  iron  and  steel  is  gener- 
ally superior  to  and  is  always  equal  to  that  of  foreign  rolled 
iron  and  steel.  In  the  rolling  of  heavy  armor  plates  we  have 
recently  made  great  progress.  In  the  production  of  heavy 
forgings  and  castings,  as  well  as  of  all  lighter  products  of  the 
foundry  and  machine-shop,  this  country  has  shown  all  the 
skill  of  the  most  advanced  ironmaking  countries  in  Europe. 
At  the  works  of  the  Bethlehem  Iron  Company  we  have  the 
largest  steam  hammer  in  the  world,  and  at  the  same  works 
there  are  hydraulic  forging  presses  which  will  favorably  com- 
pare with  any  in  Europe.  In  the  production  of  steel  cast- 
ings we  have  also  shown  great  skill  and  much  enterprise. 

All  our  leading  iron  and  steel  works  and  very  many  of 
our  small  works  are  now  supplied  with  systematic  chemical 
investigations  by  their  own  chemists,  who  are  often  men  of 
eminence  in  their  profession.  The  managers  of  our  blast 
furnaces,  rolling  mills,  and  steel  works  are  themselves  fre- 
quently well-educated  chemists,  metallurgists,  geologists,  or 
mechanical  engineers,  and  sometimes  all  of  these  combined. 
Our  rapid  progress  in  increasing  our  production  of  iron  and 
steel  is  not  merely  the  result  of  good  fortune,  or  favorable 
legislation,  or  the  possession  of  unlimited  natural  resources, 
but  is  largely  due  to  the  possession  of  accurate  technical 
knowledge  by  our  manufacturers  and  by  those  who  are 
in  charge  of  their  works,  Combined  with  the  characteristic 
American  energy  which  all  the  world  has  learned  to  respect. 
The  "  rule  of  thumb  "  has  long  ceased  to  govern  the  opera- 
tions of  the  iron  and  steel  works  of  this  country. 

What  wonderful  changes  have  taken  place  since  those 
"  good  old  colony  times  "  and  the  early  days  of  the  new  re- 
public, when  our  fathers  needed  only  a  little  iron  and  what 
little  they  required  was  made  by  slow  and  simple  methods ! 

A  feature  of  our  iron  and  steel  industries  which  has 
attended  their  marvelous  productiveness  in  late  years  is  the 


IRON   IN   ALL   AGES.  539 

aggregation  of  a  number  of  large  producing  establishments 
in  districts,  or  "  centres,"  in  lieu  of  the  earlier  practice  of 
erecting  small  furnaces  and  forges  wherever  sufficient  water- 
power,  iron  ore,  and  charcoal  could  be  obtained.  This  ten- 
dency to  concentration  is,  it  is  true,  not  confined  to  our  iron 
and  steel  industries,  but  it  is  to-day  one  of  the  most  power- 
ful elements  which  influence  their  development.  It  had  its 
beginning  with  the  commencement  of  our  distinctive  roll- 
ing-mill era,  about  1830,  but  it  received  a  powerful  impetus 
with  the  establishment  of  our  Bessemer-steel  industry  within 
the  last  twenty  years.  Pittsburgh  is  to-day  the  most  pro- 
ductive steel  centre  in  the  world. 

How  great  has  been  the  change  !  In  colonial  days  and 
long  after  the  Revolution  our  ironmaking  establishments  be- 
longed to  the  class  of  manufacturing  enterprises  described 
by  Zachariah  Allen,  in  his  Science  of  Mechanics,  in  1829.; 
"  The  manufacturing  operations  in  the  United  States  are  all 
carried  on  in  little  hamlets,  which  often  appear  to  spring  up 
in  the  bosom  of  some  forest,  gathered  around  the  waterfall 
that  serves  to  turn  the  mill-wheel.  These  villages  are  scat- 
tered over  a  vast  extent  of  country,  from  Indiana  to  the 
Atlantic,  and  from  Maine  to  North  Carolina,  instead  of  be- 
ing collected  together,  as  they  are  in  England,  in  great  man- 
ufacturing districts."  While  these  primitive  and  picturesque 
but  unproductive  methods  could  not  forever  continue  it  is 
greatly  to  be  regretted  that  our  manufactures  of  iron  and 
steel  and  other  staple  products  could  not  have  grown  to  their 
present  useful  and  necessary  proportions  unattended  by  the 
evils  which  usually  accompany  the  collection  of  large  man- 
ufacturing populations  in  small  areas.  ' 

But  the  progressive  spirit  of  this  wonderfully  creative 
age  not  only  tends  steadily  toward  still  further  concentration 
of  our  manufacturing  industries  in  districts  or  centres  but 
it  also  invites  and  in  many  instances  even  compels  the  con- 
solidation under  one  management  of  large  amounts  of  man- 
ufacturing capital  and  of  separate  manufacturing  resources. 
The  iron  and  steel  industries  of  this  country  furnish  in  late 
years  a  notable  illustration  of  this  latter  tendency.  At  Pitts- 
burgh Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie  and  his  associates,  at  Chicago 
the  Illinois  Steel  Company,  and  at  Steelton  and  Sparrow's 


540  THE   MANUFACTURE   OF    IRON   IN   ALL   AGES. 

Point  the  Pennsylvania  Steel  Company  respectively  control 
plants  for  the  manufacture  of  pig  iron  and  steel  which  sepa- 
rately have  greater  producing  capacity  in  each  of  these  spe- 
cialties than  the  plants  of  any  European  company,  while  the 
works  of  the  Lackawanna  Iron  and  Steel  Company  at  Scran- 

*ton  can  produce  more  steel  alone  than  any  European  plant. 
Is  it  any  wonder  that  in  1890  this  country  produced  over 

,34  per  cent,  of  the  world's  production  of  pig  iron  and  over 
\  35  per  cent,  of  its  production  of  steel ! 

Upon  the  future  prospects  of  the  iron  and  steel  industries 
of  this  country  it  is  not  necessary  for  us  to  dwell.  Our  re- 
sources for  the  increased  production  of  iron  and  steel  for 
an  indefinite  period  are  ample,  and  all  other  essential  con- 
ditions of  continued  growth  are  within  our  grasp.  We  are 
to-day  the  first  ironmaking  and  steelmaking  country  in  the 
world.  We  surpass  even  Great  Britain  in  the  production  of 
pig  iron  and  in  the  aggregate  production  of  steel.  We  con- 
sume much  more  iron  and  steel  than  any  other  country. 
These  conditions  and  results  are  certainly  gratifying  to  our 
national  pride.  They  mark  wonderful  industrial  achieve- 
ments by  a  young  nation  in  a  space  of  time  so  brief  that 
we  may  almost  say  it  dates  from  yesterday.  They  are  also 
prophetic  of  other  and  still  greater  achievements.  If  it  be 
true,  as  it  is  recorded  in  the  second  chapter  of  Daniel,  that 
"  iron  breaketh  in  pieces  and  subdueth  all  things,"  then  the 
country  which  produces  and  consumes  the  most  iron  and 
steel  must  take  the  first  rank  in  extending  and  influencing 
the  world's  civilization. 

Meanwhile  the  fact  is  worthy  of  notice  that  the  saying 
of  Bishop  Berkeley,  "  westward  the  course  of  empire  takes 
its  way,"  has  already  received  a  new  interpretation,  for  the 
iron  industry,  the  source  and  sign  of  material  power,  which 
had  its  beginning  in  Asia  and  afterwards  passed  successively 
to  the  countries  upon  the  Mediterranean,  along  the  Rhine, 
and  in  the  north  and  west  of  Europe,  and  thence  crossed  the 
Atlantic  ocean,  now  finds  a  home  in  the  shadows  of  the 
Rocky  mountains  and  by  the  Golden  Gate  of  the  Pacific 
ocean.  It  has  made  the  circuit  of  the  world. 


PERSONAL  INDEX, 


This  index  includes  the  names  of  only  a  few  writers  who  have  been  quoted,  and 
does  not  include  the  names  of  persons  of  antiquity,  scriptural  names,  nor  the  names  of 
emperors,  kings,  and  other  potentates.  In  the  preparation  of  this  index  the  main  object 
has  been  to  record  the  names  of  pioneer  iron  and  steel  manufacturers.  Names  of  manu- 
facturing companies  and  of  iron  and  steel  works  are  omitted. 


A.  Page 

Abbott,  Dr.  Henry 2 

Abbott,  H.,  &  Son 445 

Acrelius,  Israel 154,  155,  156,  171,  173,  174 

177,  182,  184,  186,  187,  188 

Adam,  John 117 

Adams,  David 229 

Adams,  George 314 

Adams,  John  and  John  Quincy 113 

Adams,  W.  H * 262 

Agnew,  David 270,  324,  326 

Agnew,  David  and  John  P 324 

Agricola,  Georgius 82,  83,  95 

Akerman,  Professor  Richard 93,  94,  404 

Albright,  Joseph  J 192 

Alden,  John  and  Mason  F 200 

Alexander,  J.  H 27,  28,  39,  240,  249,  253 

256,  370,  372 

Alexander,  Robert 301 

Alexander,  William  (Lord  Stirling) 152 

Alexander's  furnace 374 

Alger,  Cyrus 364 

Allaire,  James  P 158 

Allison  &  Henderson 208 

Allen,  Mr.  (Bessemer's  brother-in-law)...  402 

Allen,  Colonel  Ethan 128,  129,  502 

Allen,  Frank '. 325 

Allen,  Job 148 

Allen,  John 157 

Allen,  Nicholas 473 

Allen  &  Turner 156 

Allen,  William  (chief  justice) 155,  156 

159,  168 

Allen,  Zachariah 539 

Ames,  Fisher 133 

Ames,  Horatio *..  462 

Anderson,  James 230 

Anderson,  Robert  J 423 

Anderson  &  Co 423 

Anderson  and  Cooper 151 

Anderson  &  Woods 422 

Ankrim,  Josiah,  &  Son 389 

Anshutz,  George .'.  207,  218,  225,  226,  231 

Archibald,  C.  D 44 

Armstrong,  John 185 


Page 

Arnold,  Benedict 268 

Arnold  (historian) 134 

Ashbridge,  George 158 

Ashebran,  Mr 332,  333 

Ashman,  George 204,  205 

Asmus,  George 535 

B. 

Backhouse,  Richard 496 

Backus,  Rev.  Isaac 124 

Baker,  Elias 208,  222 

Baker,  Hilary 496 

Baldwin,  Judge  Henry 223,  502 

Baldwin,  Robinson,  McNickle  &  Beltz- 

hoover 223,  228,  229 

Ball,  Daniel 129 

Ball,  John 234,  236,  237 

Ball,  Joseph 504 

Ball,  Mary,  (mother  of  Washington) 504 

Ball,  William 237 

Ballendine,  Mr 268 

Balliet,  John 192 

Balliet,  Stephen 192 

Bancroft',  George 479,  480,  482,  483 

Bannan,  Benjamin 478 

Barkers,  (Massachusetts  iron  workers) 120 

Barney,  Ariel  N 322 

Barnum,  Milo 130 

Barnum,  Hon.  William  H 130,  135 

Bartholomew  &  Dorsey 207 

Bartlett,  James  Herbert 351 

Baude,  Peter 47 

Bauerman,  H 75 

Baughman,  Joseph 358 

Baxter,  William 250 

Beach,  Abram 342 

Beale,  Thomas 210 

Beall,  Walter 282,  283,  284 

Beekman,  William 233 

Beelen,  Anthony 226,  227 

Belcher,  Governor  of  New  Jersey 159 

Belknap,  M.  B 229 

Belknap,  Bean  &  Butler 229 

Bell,  Herbert  C 169 


542 


PERSONAL   INDEX. 


Bell,  Dr.  John 32,  68 

Bell,  John,  &  Co 218 

Bell,  Sir  Lowthian 500 

Bell,  Martin 208 

Bell,  William 91 

Belzoni,  Giovanni  Battista 3 

Bemeut,  William  B.,  &  Son 463 

Benezet,  Daniel 179 

Beninger,  John 219 

Benner,  General  Philip 206 

Benner's  forge 309 

Bennet,  Nehemiah 133 

Bennett,  Richard 241 

Bennett,  William 184,  212 

Berkeley,  Bishop 540 

Berkley,  John 104,  105 

Berkley,  Maurice 104 

Berkley,  Sir  William 258 

Berlin,  David 474 

Berry,  A.  V 321 

Berry,  George  A 225,  226 

Bessemer,  Sir  Henry 63,  395,  396,  397,  399 

400,  401,  402,  403,  404,  405,  407,  409,  410,  419 

Bessemer,  Henry,  &  Co 405 

Bevens,  Alfred,  &  Co 341 

Beverley,  Robert 103,  104,  105,  106 

Biddle,  Nicholas 359 

Biddle,  Owen 470 

Bigot,  M 349 

Birch,  George  H 44 

Bird,  Mark 175,  176,  184,  267,  507 

Bird,  William 175 

Bird,  William  (another) 496 

Birkinbine,  John 307,  515,  516 

Birkinshaw,  John 429,  430 

Bishop,  John 410 

Bissell,  John 230 

Bissell,  Samuel 127 

Bitter,  Michael,  &  Son 201 

Black,  William 249 

Blackstone,  Sir  William 486 

Elaine,  James  (ironmaster) 210 

Elaine,  Hon.  James  G 536 

Elaine,  Walker  &  Co 210 

Blair,  Thomas  S 392 

Blake,  Henry 230 

Blockley,  Thomas 91 

Bloomfield,  Joseph  E 433 

Board,  Cornelius 149 

Board,  Joseph 149 

Bochs,  Godfrey 48 

Boggs,  Andrew 426 

Boggs,  MCses 206 

Boone,  Annie 508 

Boone,  Daniel 508 

Boone,  George ^ 508 

Borden,  Colonel T. 434 

Borden,  Joseph 157 

Bouchette,  Joseph  (historian) 350 

Bowen,  R '228,  229 

Bowie,  James 233 


Page 

Bowman,  Jacob 216 

Boyce,  James  P 290 

Boyd,  Samuel 469 

Boyd,  William 469 

Bradford,  William 104 

Bradley,  William  A 257 

Branson,  William 171, 173, 174, 178,  236,  382 

Breading,  Nathaniel. 215 

Breckinridge,  John 283,  284 

•Breckinridge,  John  C 284 

Brewster,  Samuel 139 

Brice,  Dr 304 

Brick,  Joseph  W 158 

Bridges,  Robert 108 

Briggs,  Benjamin  F 274 

Brinkerhoff,  John 143,  144 

Britton,  J.  Blodget 388 

Broadmeadow,  Simeon 389 

Brock,  R.  A 106,  258,  266,  467 

Brougham,  Lord 492 

Brown,  John 128 

Brown,  John,  of  Ossawatomie 380 

Brown,  John  N 409 

Brown,  Joseph  H 222 

Brown,  Nicholas  and  Moses 127 

Brown,  Dr.  Ryland  T 314 

Brown,  William 210 

Brown,  Bonnell  &  Co 311 

Brown  &  Watson 198 

Brown's  History  of  Locomotives.. 428,  429,  439 

Bruce,  Mr 72,  73 

Bryant,  Mr 358 

Bryant,  Gridley 427 

Bryant,  William  Cullen 361 

Buchanan,  Franklin 295 

Buchanan,  James 497 

Buck,  William  J 469,  472,  473,  478 

Buckley  &  Swift 364 

Buckwalter,  John 220 

Budd,  Eli  and  Wesley 158 

Budd,  Thomas 147 

Buffington,  Mr , 276 

Buffington,  E.  J 450 

Burd,  Colonel  James 468 

Burden,  Henry 145,  230 

Burr,  John 155 

Burrell,  Thomas 220 

Burrell,  Walter,  Esq 86 

Burrows,  William 161 

Burt,  William  A 321 

Bushnell,  C.  S 445,  447 

Bussed,  Dr.  Charles 338 

Bussey,  Dr.  J.  B !..  S38 

Butland,  James 363 

Butland  &  Rowland 363 

Butler,  J.  Green 222 

Butler,  J.  G.,  Sr 322 

Butler,  J.  G.,  Jr 312,  322 

Byrd,  Col.  William,  1st 106,  467 

Byrd,  Colonel  William,  2d...259,  260,  261,  262 
263,  266,  267,  374,  378,  467,  504 


PERSONAL   INDEX. 


543 


C.  Page 

Caldwell,  Charles  and  George 129 

Calhoun,  Hon.  John  C 446 

Callaway,  Thomas 268,  269 

Callender,  Norman 199 

Campbell,  James 477 

Campbell,  John 305,  306,  308 

Canan,  Stewart  &  Moore 208 

Canfield,  Israel 160 

Carey,  Henry  C 369,  480 

Carey,  Mathew 369,  480 

Carnegie,  Andrew 539 

Carnegie,  Thomas  M 417 

Carnegie  Brothers  &  Co.  Limited 411,  456 

Carnegie,  Phipps  &  Co.  Limited 424 

Carpenter,  Conrad 465 

Carr,  S.  T 321 

Carroll,  Charles  (of  Carrollton) 428 

Carroll,  Dr.  Charles 250 

Carroll,  Tasker,  and  others 252 

Cary,  Colonel  Archibald 106,  107 

Cary,  Robert 262 

Chamberlain,  Captain  H.  S 291 

Chambers,  Colonel  James 198,  254 

Chambers,  William,  Benjamin,  and  George  197 

Chapman,  Nathaniel 247,  452,  503 

Chatham,  Lord 480 

Chaucer,  Godfrey 43 

Chetwynd,  Walter 242,  245,  265,  503,  504 

Chetwynd,  William..,..  242,  245,  246,  247,  249 

265,  503,  504 

Child,  Robert 113 

Chisholm,  Henry 313,  417 

Chiswell,  Mr 260,  266,  378 

Chouteau,  Charles  P 409 

Chrisman  family ' 167 

Christmas,  Hazlett  &  Co 304 

Cist,  Charles 474,  475 

Cist,  Jacob 475 

Clapham,  Mr 267 

Clare,  Thomas  D 409 

Clarke,  Captain  Thomas 118 

Clay,  Henry 492 

Clendenin,  David 301 

Clendenin  &  Co 301 

Clinton,  Governor  of  New  York 137 

Clymer,  Mr.  (member  of  First  Congress).  536 

Coates,  John  R 383 

Cobb,  Andrew  B 162 

Cochran,  Benjamin 448 

Cockerill,  John 54,  88 

Cole,  Sarrtuel 197 

Coleman,  Hon.  G.  Dawson 180 

Coleman,  Robert...  179,  180,  181,  183,  196,  496 

Coleman,  R.  &  G.  D 389 

Coleman,  R.  H.  &W 389 

Coleman,  Thomas  Burd 196 

Coleman,  William 389,  390 

Coleman,  Hailman  &  Co 389,  390 

Collins,  Edward  K 322 

Collins,  John,  Governor  of  Delaware 238 

Colt,  Samuel  and  John : 160 


Page 
Coney,  Jabez  ..........................................  ..  443 

Conyngham,  Redmond  ............................  168 

Cooke,  John  Esten  (historian)  ..........  259,  262 

Cooper,  Benjamin  ....................................  151 

Cooper,  Peter  ......................  161,  361,  364,  439 

Cooper,  Thomas  ........................................  354 

Cooper  &  Hewitt  ...............................  159,  435 

Cooper,  Hewitt  &  Co  ...............................  422 

Cope,  Gilbert  ............................................  171 

Corning,  Erastus  .......................................  144 

Cort,  Henry..53,  54,  56,  63,  90,  94,  98,  491,  533 
Cosby,  Governor  of  New  York  .................  135 

Cowan,  Christopher  ............  212,  227,  228,  229 

Cowan,  Dr.  Frank  ...................................      9 

Coxe,  Colonel  Daniel  ...............................  157 

Coxe,  Tench...  237,  239,  273,  277,  285,  314,  382 

..........................................  ......  383,  491,  509 

Craig,  Isaac,  Esq  ...............................  212,  227 

Craig,  Major  Isaac  ....................................  214 

Cramer's  "Almanack"  ......  227,  228,  229,  270 

Cramp,  W.,  &  Sons  ..................................  444 

Crane,  George  ...........  56,  63,  356,  357,  358,  359 

......................................................  360,  361 

Cravens,  Robert  .......................................  290 

Crawford,  Alexander  L  ....................  223,  324 

Crawford,  George  .....................................  508 

Crawford,  A.  L.  and  J.  M  .......................  223 

Crawford,  J.  M.,  &  Co  .............................  223 

Crawford,  Colonel  William  ...............  213,  468 

Crawley,  Ambrose  ....................................  163 

Creve-Cceur,  Marquis  de  ..........................  140 

Crocker,  Charles  ......................................  315 

Croghan,  Colonel  .....................................  468 

Cromwell,  Thomas  ...................................  204 

Crooker,  Ralph  ...................  364,  435,  461,  466 

Crosby,  John  ............................................  177 

Crowell,  Hon.  John  .................................  312 

Crowther,  John  .................................  310,  373 

Crowther,  Joshua,  Joseph  J.,  and  Benja- 

min .......................................................  374 

Crumrine,  Boyd  ........................................  213 

Cuddy  &  Ledlie  .......................................  229 

Cunningham,  Messrs  ................................  139 

Curtin,  Andrew  G.,  Governor  of  Penna...  206 
Curtin,  Roland  .........................................  206 

Curtis,  J.  B  ..............................................  325 

Custis's  "Recollections"  .........................  263 


Daddow,  S.  H  ...................................  473,  478 

Dankers,  Jasper  .......................................  163 

Darby,  Abraham  ......................  52,  53,  63,  366 

Davenporte,  John  .................................  ....  118 

Davies,  Gabriel  ........................................  181 

Davies,  Margaretta  ...................................  181 

Davies  &  Potts  .........................................  183 

Davis,  Mr.  (founder)  .........................  372,  373 

Day,  St.  John  V  ............  4,  8,  9,  66,  68,  79,  95 

Day,  Sherman  ...............  168,  193,  203,  222,  372 

Dean,  Theodore  .......................................  115 

Deane,  Francis  B  ....................................  270 


544 


PERSONAL   INDEX. 


Deane,  William  Read 115,  146 

DeBardeleben,  H.  F 295 

D6by,  M.  Julian 25 

Deere,  John 390 

Deering,  Richard 285 

DeLancy,  Charles  D 445 

Delaplaine,  Nicholas 160 

Deming,  E 387 

Dempsey,  Andrew 306 

Denonville,  Marquis  de 348 

Depue,  Daniel 205 

Despard,  Lambert  and  Mark 120 

Detmold,  C.  E 454,  458 

Devonshire,  Duke  of. 403 

Dewees,  Colonel  William 174 

Dewey,  Joseph 131,  379 

Dexter,  Thomas 108 

Dickerson,  Hon.  Mahlon 147 

Dickinson,  Jonathan 164,  166 

Dicks,  Peter 177,  184,  186 

Diller,  Roland 208 

Dillon,  Moses 214,  303,  304 

Dixon,  Joseph 392 

Doddridge,  Rev.  Dr.  Joseph 101 

Dorr,  E.  P 444 

Dorsey  family 255 

Dorsey,  Edward 253 

Douglas,  R.  A 316 

Douglass  (historian) 121,  137 

Douglass,  C 496 

Downing,  A 315 

Downing,  Samuel 125 

Doyle,  John 209 

Drake,  John 379 

Drake,  Silas 335 

Dredge  James 26,  76 

Dubbs,  Rev.  Joseph  Henry 179 

Dubbs,  Martin 207 

Du  Chaillu,  Paul  B 30 

Dudley,  Dud 46,  51,  52,  53,  97 

Dumble,  E.  T 339 

Du  Motay '....  406 

Dunbar  &  Leonard 126 

Duncan,  Stephen 211 

Dunlap's  "Pennsylvania  Packet" 178 

Dunlop,  John 201,  206 

Dunn,  Patrick  and  James 389 

Dunn,  General  Samuel 197 

Durfee,  Bradford 491 

Durfee,  William  F 409,  410,  412,  413,  423 

Durfee,  Z.  S 409,  410,  412,  413,  417 

Dutton,  Robert 241 

Duval,  Samuel 470 

E. 

Eager  (historian) 137,  138 

Earl,  Anthony  S 220 

Earl,  William 220 

Earp  &  Brink 389 

Eaton,  Absalom 334 

Eaton,  Daniel 301 


Page 

Eckert,  Valentine 496 

Eddy,  Mr 323 

Edwards,  Giles 290 

Edwards,  John 496 

Edwards,  Hon.  John  M 301,  311 

Edwards,  Jonathan 312 

Ege,  George 176,  200,  496 

Ege,  Michael 185,  198,  200,  496 

Eggertz,  Professor  Viktor 405 

Egle,  Dr.  William  H 166,  168 

Egleston,  Professor  Thomas 142 

Eichelberger,  Frederick 184 

Elder,  Dr.  William 479 

Eliot,  Aaron 131,  132,  380,  381 

Eliot,  Rev.  Jared 131,  380 

Eliot,  John 131 

Elliot,  Shadrach 238 

Elliott,  Charles  G 131 

Ellison,  Andrew 304,  305,  306 

Emerson,  James  E 385,  386,  387,  388 

Emerson,  Smith  &  Co 387 

Endicott,  Mr.,  of  Salem 108 

England,  James  B.,  Esq 248 

England,  John 235,  242,  243,  244,  245,  246 

247,  248,  250,  253,  261,  265,  266,  452,  503,  504 

England,  Joseph 248 

Ericsson,  Captain  John... 443,  444,  445,  446,  447 

Erskine,  Rev.  Ralph 151 

Erskine,  Robert 150,  151 

Erwin,  Walter 149 

Estell,  John 157 

Evans,  John 235 

Evans,  Lewis 468 

Evans,  Oliver 426 

Evans,  Robert 253 

Evans,  Stephen 174 

Everett,  P.  M 321 

Eversol,  Perry  &  Ruggles 334 

F. 

Fackenthal,  B.  F.,  Jr 169 

Faesch,  John  Jacob 150,  151,  152 

Fahnestock,  Samuel 207 

Fairbairn,  William 36,  73 

Falkner,  Ralph 247 

Fare,  Thomas 165 

Farmer,  Joseph 241,  242,  244,  246,  249 

Farmer,  Joseph,  &  Co 241 

Farnsworth,  Daniel. 157 

Farr  &  Kunzi ! 353,  358 

Faur,  Achilles   Christian   Wilhelrn  Von 

Faber  du 455,  458 

Faux,  William *...  344 

Fegar,  Colonel  J.  M > 172 

Fell,  Judge  Jesse 476 

Felton,  Samuel  M 417 

Fields  &  Stickney 302 

Firmstone,  William. ..305,  358,  360,  367,  363,  369  . 

Firmstone,  W.  &  G 368 

Fisher,  Isaac 368 

Fisher,  Thomas 131 


PERSONAL   INDEX. 


545 


.        Page 

Fisher,  Morgan  &  Co 211 

Fitch,  Walker,  and  Wyllys 380 

Fitz  Williams,  Mr 260 

Fletcher,  H.  A 39 

Fletcher,  William  A 332,  333 

Flower,  Philip  William 49,  82,  90,  91 

Flower,  Samuel 173 

Fobes,  Rev.  Dr 112,  115 

Foley,  Richard 48 

Forbes,  David,  F.  R.  S 71 

Forbes,  R.  B 443 

Forbes,  Samuel 128 

Ford,  ColonelJacob,  Sr 153 

Ford,  Colonel  Jacob,  Jr 153 

Ford,  Samuel 151 

Forney,  Charles  B 336 

Foster,  John  Wells 101 

Foster,  William  E 127 

Fox,  Charles,  Esq 309,  387 

Frame,  Richard 164,  233 

Francis,  Colonel 469,  472 

Franklin,  Benjamin 131, 172,  243,  380,  484 

485,  502 

Franklin,  William,  Governor  of  N.  J 160 

Franquet,  M 349 

Franquoy,  or  Francois,  M.  Jules 25,  75 

Frazer,  Colonel  Persifor 178 

Frazer,  Mrs.  Persifor 178 

Freed,  A.  T 348,  349 

Freeman,  Mr 218 

Fritz,  George 413,  414,  416 

Fritz,  John 291,  414,  464 

Frost,  John 303 

Fulton,  Henry 200 

Fulton,  James 183,  189 

G. 

Gallatin,  Albert 509 

Galloway,  William  and  John 402 

Galloway  &  Co 404 

Gantt,  Fielder 254 

Garrard  Brothers 385,  387,  392,  394 

Garrard,  John  H 309,  385,  387,  388 

Garrard,  Dr.  William...  309,  310,  385,  386,  387 

388 

Garret  &  Co.  (Gurrit  &  Co.) 183 

Gates,  Sir  Thomas 103,  107 

Gay,  Stephen  R 322,  323 

Gayley,  James 456 

Geary,  John  W.,  Governor  of  Penna...  220,  371 

Geary,  Richard 220 

Gee,  Joshua...  241,  242,  244,  246,  265,  479,  503 

.' 504 

Geissenhainer,  Rev.  Frederick  W 201,  202 

354,  355,  356,  357,  358,  360,  470 

Gerehart  &  Reynolds 219 

Gibson  (historian) 184 

Gibson,  John 214,  216,  303 

Gibson,  Joshua 215 

Gifford,  John 113 

Gilchrist,  Percy  C 405,  406,  421 


Giles,  Nathan ;.  135 

Ginter,  Philip 474 

Gladstone,  Right  Hon.  William  E 12 

Gloninger,  Judge  John 207,  225 

Gloninger,  Anshutz  &  Co 207 

Gooch,  Governor  of  Virginia 249 

Goodwin,  William 253 

Goransson,  Goran  F..... 63,  396,  404,  405 

Gordon's  "Gazetteer"...  207,  218,  221,  223,  427 

Gore  Brothers 472 

Gormly,   John 227 

Gorringe,  Commander  H.  H 3 

Grace,  Robert 172 

Graff,  Bennett  &  Co 231,  460,  477 

Graffenreidt,  Baron  de 259 

Green  (historian) 38 

Green,  Willis 283,  284 

Greene,  George  K 314 

Greene,  Jabez 127 

Greene,  Nathanael 127 

Greene,  Major  General  Nathanael....  127,  502 

Greenup,  Christopher 282,  283,  284 

Gregg,  Andrew 211 

Gregory,  Dudley  S 391 

Gregory  &  Co 393 

Griffen,   John 462,  466 

Griffith,  William 158 

Griggs,  Joseph  P 338 

Griswold,  Hon.  John  A 409,  416,  444,  445 

446,  447 

Griswold,  John  A.,  &  Co 422 

Grover,  James 146 

Growdon,  Joseph 245 

Grubb  family 168,  183,  196 

Grubb,  Clement  B 433 

Grubb,  Curtis 182,  496 

Grubb,  E.  B.  &  C.  B 200 

Grubb,    Henry 184,  185 

Grubb,  Henry  Bates 196 

Grubb,  John 182 

Grubb,  Peter 182,  184 

Grubb,  Colonel  Peter 182,  496 

Grubb,  Ptter,  Jr 196,  496 

Grtiner,  Professor 97 

Grunneld,  Jesse 496 

Guard,  Calen,  &  Co 317 

Guest,  Mr.  (member  of  Parliament) 437 

Guiteau,  Julius 358,  360 

H. 

Haldeman,  Dr.  E 199 

Haldeman,  Henry 199 

Haldeman,  Jacob 199 

Haldeman,  Jacob  M 199 

Haldeman,  Jacob  S 199 

Haldeman,  John 199 

Haldeman,  Paris 199 

Haldeman,  Richard 199 

Haldeman,  Professor  S.  S 199 

Hall,  George 114 

Hall,  Henry 442,  443 


546 


PERSONAL   INDEX. 


Page 
Hall,  John  (of  Philadelphia  county,  Pa.)  178 

Hall,  John  (of  Taunton) 114 

Hall,  Captain  J.  W.  D 114,  116,  117 

Halsey,  Hon.  Edmund  D...  148,  149,  151,  152 

155,  160,426 

Hamilton,  Alexander 382,  491,  534 

Hamilton,  Andrew 235  j 

Hamilton,  James 218  | 

Hamilton,  Lieut.  Governor  James....  484,  485  j 

Hamilton,  Robert 305,  306  j 

Hammer,  John 220 

Hanbury,  Capel 56 

Hanbury,  Major  John 53,  63,  90,  91,  94 

Hanks,  Nancy 508 

Hanssien,  a  Voigtlander 27 

Hariot,  or  Heriot,  Thomas  (historian) 102 

Harper,  Samuel 218 

Harriman,  John 153 

Harrington,  Clarke  W 342 

Harris,  Thomas  &  Co 206 

Harrison,  Battle 333 

Harrison,   Chr 213 

Harrison,  James 409 

Harrison,  Joseph  and  Carlisle 283 

Harrison,  William 333 

Harrison,  William  Henry 121 

Hartland,  Mr.  (Egyptian  explorer) 4 

Hartley,  James 496 

Harvey,  Nathan 201 

Haseltine,  John •. 128 

Hasenclever,  Peter 149,  150 

Hassall,  John 450 

Hassall,  William 450 

Hatherly,  Timothy 120 

Hathorne,  Captain  William 121 

Haupt,  Professor  L.  M 466 

Hauser,  George 273 

Hauto,  George  F.  A 475 

Hawes,  John 54 

Hawkes,  Adam Ill 

Hawkes,  Nathan  M 110,  112 

Hawkhurst,  William 137 

Hay,  Sir  George 59 

Hayden,  John 213,  215 

Hayes,  Hon.  John  L 132,  491 

Hayes,  William 496 

Hays,  William  B .'.  229 

Haywood  &  Snyder 355,  434 

Hazard,  Erskine 356,  361,  364,  465,  475 

Heath,  Josiah  Marshall 421 

Heaton,  Isaac 311 

Heaton,  James 302,  311 

Heimbach,  David,  Sr 191,  192 

Heimbach,  David,  Jr 191,  192 

Heister,  Gabriel 199 

Helfrick,  Samuel 192 

Hellings,  John 496 

Henao,  Father  Gabriel  de 23 

Henderson,  James 290,  406 

Henderson  &  Ross 255 

Henfrey,  Benjamin 471 


Page 

Hennepin,  Father 467 

Henry,  Matthew  S 191 

Henry,  William  (of  Nazareth,  Pa.) 191 

Henry,  William  (of  Oxford  furnace) 453 

Herndon,  Samuel 283 

Hewitt,  Hon.  Abram  S 150,  161,  407,  408 

421,  435 

High,   Henry 358 

Highly,  Levi 142 

Higley  family 380 

Higley,  Samuel 131,  379 

Hill,  Colonel  A.  M 477 

Hill,  William 276,  277 

Hill's  bloomary 273,  274 

Hillegas,  Michael 474 

Himrod,  David 373 

Himrod  &  Vincent 372 

Hinijossa,  Alexander  De 233 

Hoadly,  Charles  J 378,  379,  380 

Hockley,  J 496 

Hockley,  Richard 173,  382 

Hodge's  forge v 279 

Hoff,  Charles 152 

Hoff,  Joseph 151,  152 

Hogge,  Ralph 47 

Holker,  Colonel  John 214 

Hollenback,  Judge 473 

Holley,  A.  H.,  Governor  of  Connecticut...  130 

Holley,  A.  L 77,  130,  409,  410,  412,  414,  417 

Holley  &  Coffing 129 

Holliday,  John '. 220 

Hollingsworth,  Henry 382 

Hollingsworth,  John 283 

Holloman,  A.  W 332,  333 

Hoopes,  Townsend  &  Co 222 

Hopkins,  James  M 196 

Hopkins,  John  Henry  (bishop)..  218,  222,  502 

Hopkins,  Stephen 127,  502 

Hopper,  H.  J 391 

Homer,   Isaac 157 

Hough,  Matthias 496 

Houghton,  John 88,  91,  92,  94 

Housum,  Peter  and  George 198 

Howard,    Dr 255 

Howe,  Senator  Timothy  0 413 

Howell,  Reading 473 

Hubbard,  Rev.  William 110,  116 

Huber,  John 179 

Hudson,  Thomas Ill 

Hughes,   Mr 338 

Hughes,  Daniel  and  Samuel 198 

Hughes,  Gideon 303 

Hughes,  Samuel  and  Daniel 254 

Humphreys,  A.  \V 138 

Humphreys,  Thomas 496 

Humphreys,  Whitehead 153,  178,  382 

Hungerford,  Austin  N 155,  157,  158,  192 

209,  213,  214,  233,  234,  235,  236,  238,  468 

Hunt,  Alfred 193,  417 

Hunt,   Mordecai 193 

Hunt,  M.  R 458 


PERSONAL   INDEX. 


547 


Page 

Hunt,  Robert 34,  53,  55 

Hunt,  Robert  W 400,  412,  414 

Hunt,  Dr.  T.  Sterry 348 

Hunter,  James 266,  268 

Huntsman,  Benjamin....  54,  55,  63,  67,  95,  96 

98,  99 

Kurd,  Jacob 148 

Hurst,  Rev.  Joseph 77 

Huskisson,  William  (member  of  Parlia- 
ment)   493 

Hussey,  Dr.  C.  G 394 

Hussey,  Wells  &  Co 390,  393 

Hutchins,  Captain '....  469 

Hutton  (historian) 49 

I. 

Illing,  C.  (German  traveler) 69 

Irvin,  General  James 211 

Irvine,  John 209 

J. 

Jackson,  General  Andrew..  215,  227,  284,  386 

Jackson,  George 506 

Jackson,  John 148 

Jackson,  Col.  Joseph  and  William...  160,  161 

Jackson  &  Updegraff.' 270 

Jacobs,  Benjamin 204,  253 

Jacobs,  Cyrus 182 

Jacobs,  Elizabeth  E 199 

Jacobs,  Joseph 204 

Jacques,  Mr.  (Maryland  pioneer) 254 

James,  Mrs.  (historian) 164,  165,  166,  167 

168,  171,  172,  174,  234 

James,  Samuel 234,  236 

James,  Dr.  T.  C 476 

James,  Thomas 304 

James  &  Woodruff. 309 

Jaques,   Lieutenant  W.  H 464 

Jeans,  J.  S 395,  402 

Jefferson,  Thomas 266,  268,  269,  282,  508 

Jenkins,  David 173,  496 

Jenkins,  John 173 

Jenkins,  Robert 173,  174 

Jenks,  Joseph Ill,  112,  119 

Jenks,  Joseph,  Governor  of  Rhode  Island.  119 

Jenks,  Joseph,  Jr... 119 

Johns,  Benjamin 220 

Johnson,  Governor  of  Maryland 254 

Johnson,  Edward 110 

Johnson,  James 254 

Johnson,  James,  &  Co 254 

Johnson,  John  and  Thomas 47 

Johnson,  Robert  S 389 

Johnson,  Roger 254 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel : 90 

Johnson,  General  Thomas 255 

Johnson,  Walter  R 358,  370,  431 

Johnston  (historian)..., 241,  247 

Johnston,  Alexander 219 

Johnston,  A.,  &  Co 219 

Johnston,  Benjamin 213 


Page 
Johnston,  John  ........................................  153 

Johnston,  William  F.,  Governor  of  Pa  .....  219 

Johnston,  McClurg  &  Co  ..........................  218 

Jones,  Abraham  ................  .................  506,  507 

Jones,  Dr.  Alexander  ........................  295,  476 

Jones,  Hon.  B.  F  .....................................  413 

Jones,  Benjamin  and  Robert  ..................  215 

Jones,  Catesby  ap  .....................................  295 

Jones,  David  ............................................  138 

Jones,  Isaac  .......................................  389,  390 

Jones,  John  H  .........................................  478 

Jones,  Reece  .............................................  236 

Jones,  Sarah  (mother  and  daughter)  ......  506 

Jones,  Captain  William  R  ................  414,  417 

Jones  &  Quigg  ..................................  389,  390 


Kalm,  Peter  ...............................  137,  177,  349 

Kane,  Charles  ..........................................  142 

Karsten,  Karl  Johann  Bernhard....  25,82,  83 

Karthaus,  Peter  .................................  201,  356 

Karthaus  &  Geissenhainer  .......................  201 

Keith,  Charles  P  ...............................  156,  235 

Keith,  Sir  William  .......  234,  235,  236,  248,  502 

Kelly,  G.  A  ..............................................  339 

Kelly,  John  F  ..........................................  397 

Kelly,  William  ......  396,  397,  399,  400,  407,  409 

.......................................................  410,  417 

Kelsey,  John  ............................................  129 

Kennedy,  Mr.  (of  Cincinnati)  .................  413 

Kennedy,  Robert  .....................................  465 

Kent,  Joseph  C  ........................................  455 

Kerpely,  Professor  Anton  .....................  18,  28 

Killebrew,  J.  B  ........................................  299 

Kimmell,  Peter  .............  .1  .........................  220 

King,  George  S  ........................................  221 

King,  John  ..............................................  117 

King,  Seth  ...............................................  129 

King,  Swope  &  Co  ...................................  209 

Kinsey,  Joseph  .........................................  309 

Kinsley,  Adam  .........................................  126 

Kirk,  Kelton  &  Co....:  ..............................  201 

Kirkbride,  Joseph  ....................................  148 

Kiser,  Philip  ............................................  273 

Kitson,  Sir  James  ....................................  401 

Knight,  Edward  H  ......................  82,448,  450 

Knox,  General  Henry  ......................  152,  214 

Krupp,  Alfred  ..........................................    27 

Krupp,  Friedrich  .....................................    27 

Krupp,  Friedrich  Alfred  ..........................    27 

Krupp,  Therese...!  ....................................    27 

Kunkel,  Colonel  J.  B  ..............................  406 

Kunzi,  Abraham  ......................................  358 

Kurtz  (Amish  Mennonite)  ........................  168 


Lamb,  Thomas 128 

Lambing,  Rev.  A.  A 227 

Lamborn,  Robert  H 413 

Landrin,  M.  H.  C.,  Jr 45,  97 

Lane,  Ralph .- 102 


548 


PERSONAL   INDEX. 


Page 

Lane,  William 208 

Langford,  A.  G 343 

Langford  &  Co 343 

Lapsley,  Judge  James  W 294 

Lardner,  Lynford 173 

Latham,  Joseph 148 

Laubach,  Charles 169 

Laufman  &  Co 512 

Lauth,  Bernard 206 

Laveleye,  M.  Ed.  de 80,  88 

Lawrence,  Josiah 309 

Layard,  Austin  Henry 4,  5 

Layton,  Hon.  Caleb  S 238 

Leach,  General 126 

Leacock,  John 165 

Leader,  Richard 109,  112,  113,  121 

Lee,  Anthony 165 

Lee,  Milo 343 

Lee,  General  Robert  E 198 

Lee,  Stephen  S 434 

Lee,  William  L 343 

Leephar,  Crotzer  &  Co 197 

Leiper,  Thomas 426 

Leonard,  Eliphalet.^ 125,  381 

Leonard,  Elisha  Clarke 114 

Leonard,  George 116 

Leonard,  Henry 112,  113,  114,  115,  146 

Leonard,  James 110,  112,  113,  114 

Leonard,  James,  2d 116 

Leonard,  Jonathan 125,  126,  381 

Leonard,  Joseph,  Benjamin,  and  Uriah..  116 
Leonard,  Nathaniel,  Samuel,  and  Thomas  115 

146 

Leonard,  Reuben 229 

Leonard,  Samuel  (of  Taunton) 117 

Leonard,  Samuel  (of  Pittsburgh) 228 

Leonard,  Thomas 116 

Leonard,  Captain  Thomas 114 

Leonard,  Captain  Zephaniah 117 

Leonard  &  Kinsley 126 

Lesher,  John 171 

Leshet,  Jacob 496 

Lewis,  Mr.  (of  Philadelphia) 157 

Lewis,  Alonzo 108,  109,  110,  111,  112,  113 

; 114,  115 

Lewis,  George 217,  229 

Lewis,  James - 165,  167 

Lewis,  James  F 141 

Lewis,  Llewellyn  and  Arthur 112 

Lewis,  Samuel  C 217 

Lewis,  Thomas 215 

Lewis,  Thomas  C 217 

Lewis,  General  William 210 

Lewis  and  Clarke 471 

Lincoln,  Abraham  (President)...  444,  445,  502 

504,  505,  506,  507,  508 

Lincoln,  Abraham  (of  Berks  county,  Pa.).  507 
Lincoln,  Abraham  (of  Lancaster  county, 

Pa.) 508 

Lincoln,  Abraham  (of  Scituate) 506 

Lincoln,  Abraham  (of  Virginia).  505,  507,  508 


Page 
Lincoln,  Daniel  (of  Hingham)...  120,  505,  506 

Lincoln,  George  (of  Hingham) 505,  506 

Lincoln,  Isaac  (of  Scituate) 506 

Lincoln,  John  (of  Berks  county,  Pa.) 507 

Lincoln,  Mordecai  (of  Berks  county,  Pa.).  507 
Lincoln,  Mordecai  (of  Scituate)..  120,  502,  505 

506,  507 

Lincoln,  Mordecai,  Jr.  (of  Scituate)..  506,  507 

508 

Lincoln,  Samuel  (of  Hingham) 505 

Lincoln,  Samuel  (of  Norwich,  England).  505 

Lincoln,  Thomas  (of  Hingham) 505 

Lincoln,  Thomas  (of  Berks  county,  Pa.).  507 

Lincoln,  Thomas  (of  Kentucky) 507 

Lindley  &  Speek 211 

Livingston,  David 220 

Livingston,  Philip 136,  153 

Livingston,  Philip  (signer  of  the  Decla- 
ration of  Independence) 136,  153 

Lloyd,  Steel  &  Co 211 

Lobsinger,  Hans 27,  89 

Logan,  James 163,  168,  169,  170 

Longsdon,  Robert 402 

Longstreth,  Benjamin 193 

Losey,  Jacob 160 

Lossing,  Benson  J 139,  140 

Lothrop,  Sylvanus 230 

Lowe,  S.  B 291 

Lower,  M.  A 35,  44,  46,  47,  51 

Lowry  &  Co 224 

Lowthorp,  Francis  C 359 

Loy  &  Patterson 208 

Lukens,  Dr.  Charles 195 

Lukens,  Edmund  T 154 

Lukens,  Mrs.  Rebecca  W 195 

Luther,  Martin 7 

Lyman,  William 359,  432 

Lyman,  Ralston  &  Co 461 

Lyon,  James  B.,  &  Co 422 

Lyon,  John 211,  229 

Lyon,  William  M 226,  409,  417 

M. 

Macadam,  W.  Ivison 58,  59,  78 

McCaa,  James 173 

McCall,  George , 170 

McCarthy,  C.  R.,  Esq 205 

McClurg,  Alexander 218,  219,  227 

McClurg,  Joseph 226,  227 

McComber,  William  G 322 

McConaughey,  William 236 

McConnell,  Matthew 322 

McCook,  Daniel,  &  Co 317 

McCormick,  Provance 477 

McCue,  J.  Marshall,  Esq 508 

McCulloch's  Commercial  Dictionary 479 

McCulloh,  Thomas  G 198 

McDermett,  Josephine 211 

McDermett,  Thomas 211 

McDermett,  William 211 

McDougall,  F.,  &  Son 350 


PERSONAL   INDEX. 


549 


Page 

McDougall,  George 351 

McKelvy,  S 389 

McKelvy  &  Blair 390,  392,  393 

McKinley,  Hon.  William,  Jr 497,  531 

McLanahan,  J.  King 458 

McNair,  William 310 

McPherson,  Hon.  Edward 197 

McPherson,  John  B 197 

McRae,   D 342 

McShane,  Francis 201 

Machin,  Captain  Thomas 139 

Mackey,  James 301 

Maclay,  William 210 

Mahon,  John  D 211 

Malen,  Joshua  (or  Maliu) 228,  303 

Malm  &  Bishop 363 

Manning,  Dr.  Henry 312 

Manning  &  Lee 434,  435 

Marmie,  Peter 214 

Marshall,  Caleb  and  John 239 

Marshall,  J.  M 343 

Marshall,  O.  H 140 

Marshall,  Samuel 207 

Martien,  Joseph  Gilbert 407 

Martin,  Emile  and  Pierre 420,  421 

Martin,  James 273 

Mason,  Major  John  C 283 

Massey,  Mordecai 207,  225 

Massey  &  James 335 

Master,  Legh 253 

Mather,  Cotton 101 

Mathiot,  Colonel 219 

Matthews,  George 255 

Maw  and  Dredge  (William  H.  Maw  and 

James  Dredge) 26,  76 

May,  Mr.  (of  Milwaukee) 413 

Mayberry,  Thomas 155 

Mayburry,  Thomas 170,  496 

Maybury,  Jonathan,  &  Co 218 

Maynard,  George  W 408 

Meade,  Richard 60,  61,  78,  519,  521 

Means,  John,  1st 306 

Means,  John,  2d 305,  306 

Means,  Thomas  W 304,  306,  307 

Means,  William 306 

Meason,  Isaac 214,  215,  217,  219,  303 

Meason,  Colonel  Isaac 217,  219 

Meason,  Dillon  &  Co 214 

Medine,  Don  Pedro  de 22 

Megee,  George 170 

Meyer,  C.  J.  L 329 

Middleton,  William  T 309,  387 

Middleton,  Garrard  &  Co 387 

Mifflin,  George 165 

Mighill,  Rev.  Thomas 120 

Miles,  Colonel  Samuel 206 

Miles,  Harris  &  Miles 206 

Miller,  Henry '...  267,  268,  269,  507,  508 

Miller,  Ichabod 380 

Miller,  Hon.  Jacob  W 153 

Miller,  Michael 176 


Page 

Miller,  Captain  Samuel 508 

Miller,  Thomas  C 197 

Miller,  William 192 

Miller,  Martin  &  Co 210 

MiUer,  Metcalf  &  Parkin 423 

Miner,  Hon.  Charles 475 

Mochabee,  Reuben 215 

Mockbee,  John 284 

Montgomery,  Morton  L 171,  176 

Montgomery,  Robert 301 

I  Moore,  David 304 

Moore,  Matthew 273 

Moore's  furnace 267 

Moore  &  Hooven 462 

Moorhead,  J.  B.,  &  Co 453 

Moorhead,  M.  K 226 

Morgan,  General  Daniel 169,  502 

Morgan,  Jacob,  Jr 496 

Morgan,  James 169 

Morgan,  Williams  &  Co 341 

Morosini,  G.  P 14 

Morrell,  Hon.  Daniel  J 409,  410,  417 

Morrill,  Hon.  Justin  S 393,  497 

Morris,  Anthony 167,  168,  170 

Morris,  David 312 

Morris,  Hon.  Edward  Joy 434 

Morris,  Mrs.  Henry 181 

Morris,  J.  Anthony 474 

Morris,  Jonathan 253 

Morris,  Joseph,  John,  and  Samuel 185 

Morris,  Colonel  Lewis 146,  147 

Morris,  Robert 474 

Morris,  William 474 

Morrison,  William 230 

Morse,  Dr.  Jedidiah 123,  161,  535 

Mulhollan  &  McAnulty 212 

Miiller,  Detmar  Basse 222 

Munn  &  Co 407 

Mushet,  David 28,  46,  408 

Mushet,  Robert  F 63,  396,  400,  401,  402 

403,  404,  408,  409,  410,  421 

Myers,  Christian 224 

Myers,  Jacob 282,  284 

N. 

Nancarro,  John 178 

Nancarrow  &  Matlock 382 

Napoleon  III.,  Emperor 446 

Nash,  J.  S 338 

Nasmyth,  James 63 

Needy,  Hugh 205 

Negley,  Major  William  B 226 

Neill  (History  of  the  Virginia  Company)  103 

Neilson,  James  Beaumont 53,  63,  354 

Nelson,  Mr.  (Virginia  pioneer) 260 

Nelson,  William '. 148,  150,  160 

Newberry,  Dr.  J.  S 344 

Newhall  (historian) 108,  110,  113,  115 

Newport,  Captain  Christopher 103 

Nevin,  Mrs.  Martha  J 174 

Nicholas,  Colonel  George 283,  284 


550 


PERSONAL   INDEX. 


Page 

Nicholls  (historian) 38,  84 

Nicholson,  John 214,  474 

Nicolai,  Friedrich 27 

Nicolai  &  Krupp 27 

Nicolas,  Dr.  (Virginia  pioneer) 260 

Nicolay  and  Hay 506 

Nikoll,  John  George 176 

Noble,  Abel 137 

Noble,  Henry  and  John 221,  222 

Nolan,  Louis 321 

Norden,  John 46 

Norton,  Aaron 302 

Nutt,  Samuel 166,  171,  172,  173,  174,  236 

Nutt,  Samuel,  Jr 172 

O. 

Oakley,  Mr.  (of  Brooklyn) 433 

Odiorne  (inventor) 448,  449 

Ogden,  F.  B 438 

Ogden,  Samuel 160 

Ogden's  furnace 155 

Ogdens,  the 149,  155 

O'Hara  &  Scully 218 

Old,  Ann 181 

Old,  Davies 180,  182 

Old,  James 180,  181,  182,  496 

Old,  Margaretta 182 

Old,  William  (son  of  James) 181 

Old,  William  (brother  of  James) 181 

Old,  Wilkinson  &  Trent 269 

Old's  furnace 269 

Olde,  William 496 

Oldmixon  (historian) 130,  147,  233,  236 

Olds,  Mr 321,  322 

Oliphant,  F.  H 217,  368 

Oliphant,  John  and  Andrew 215,  216 

Oliver,  Judge  Peter 121 

Onion,  Stephen..241,  242,  243,  246,  247,  252,  253 

Onion,  Stephen,  &  Co 241 

Orban,  Michael 88 

Orr,  Hugh 120 

Osborn,  Jonathan 153 

Osborn,  Samuel 403 

Osborne,  William 113 

Otis,  Charles  A 312 

Otis,  Melville . 449 

Overman,  Frederick 30,  81,  256,  366,  536 

Owen,  Evan 236 

Owings,  John  Cockey 282,  283,  284 

O  wings,  Colonel  Thomas  Dye 283 

P. 

Packer,  Hon.  S.  J 367 

Palmer,  Arthur 217 

Pannebecker,  Henry 165 

Park,  James,  Jr 409,  417,  422 

Park,  Brother  &  Co 390,  393,  422,  423,  463 

Park,  McCurdy  &  Co 421 

Parke,  Judge  John  E 230 

Parke  &  Tiers 358 

Parker  (historian) 41 


Page 

Parkins,  John  and  John  Jr 383 

Parsons,  Dr 85,  88 

Paschall,  Stephen 178,  382 

Patterson,  Burd 359,  369 

Patton,  Mrs.  Bridget 175,  176 

Patton,  Edward  B 211 

Patton,  John 175,  4% 

Patton,  Colonel  John 206 

Patton,  General  William 206 

Paul,  John  and  Joseph  M 158 

Paull,  Archibald 286,  304 

Paxson,  Samuel 215 

Paxton,  James  D 197 

Paxton,  James  D.,  &  Co 197 

Payne,  John 53,  63,  90,  91,  94 

Pears,  Jeremiah 215,  217 

Pearse,  Captain 260 

Pechar,  Joh 31,  73 

Penn,  Lieutenant  Governor  John 469 

Penn,  Richard 472 

Penn,  Thomas 178,  382,  469,  472 

Penn,  William 153,  163,  164,  166,  174 

Pennock,  Isaac 195 

Pennypacker,  Hon.  Samuel  W 165,  174 

Percy,  Dr.  John....  1,  27,  30,  37,  48,  55,  75,  80 

81,  82,  83,  90,  95,  97 

Perkins,  Jacob 133,  448,  449 

Perkins,  Peter 273 

Perkins,  Colonel  T.  H 427 

Perry,  Benjamin 359,  360 

Perry,  Matthew  Calbraith 295 

Perry,  Commodore  O.  A 227 

Peters,  Richard 466 

Peters,  Richard  (secretary) 485 

Pettitt,  Andrew 496 

Petty,  Sir  William 57 

Pettybone,  Daniel 126 

Phelps,  Timothy 379 

Phelps,  William 401 

Philip,  King  (Indian  chief) 114 

Philips,  Hardman 206 

Phillips,  Mr.  (of  Cincinnati) 413 

Phillips,  Wendell 8 

Philpot,  William 312 

Philpot,  William,  &  Co 311 

Philson,  Robert 220 

Pickering,  Colonel  Timothy 139 

Picton  (English  writer) 43 

Pierson,  Isaac 155 

Pierson,  Josiah  G 144,  448 

Pierson,  Robert 221 

Pike,  Captain  Z.  M 472 

Piper,  Conrad 220 

Pitkin,  Timothy 136,  518 

Player,  John 453 

Poague,  George 286 

Polhern,  Christopher 93,  94 

Polhem,  Gabriel 94 

Polk,  Josiah 238 

Poor,  Henry  V 428,  431,  441 

Pope's  Customs  Laws 487 


PERSONAL    INDEX. 


551 


Page 
Porter,  David  R.,  Governor  of  Penna  ......  211 

Pott,  John  .........................................  195,  357 

Potter,  O.  W  .....  .......................................  413 

Potts,  David  .............................................  496 

Potts,  Isaac  and  David  ...........................  175 

Potts,  John  .........................  167,  171,  172,  174 

Potts,  Joseph  ............................................  174 

Potts,  Robert  S  ........................................  183 

Potts,  Samuel  ...........................................  496 

Potts,  Thomas  .....................  157,  165,  167,  168 

Potts,  Thomas,  Jr  ....................  .'.  164,  167,  171 

Pourcel,  M.  Alexandre  .............  22/23,  75,  76 

Powe,  Lewis  .....................................  421,  422 

Power,  Captain  William  ..........................  211 

Pratt,  Jared  .............................................  199 

Prescott,  William  H  .................................  101 

Preston,  Samuel  ........................................  473 

Probst,  John  ......................................  218,  225 

Prowell,  George  R  ....................  ........  184,  212 

Pullman,  J.  Wesley  .................................  172 

Putnam,  Professor  F.  W  .........................  101 

Q- 

Quinby,  Jesse  B  .......................................  353 


R. 


Rahm,  Mrs 
Rahm  &  Bean 
Raleigh,  Sir  Walter 
Ralston,  A.  G.,  &  Co 
Ralston,  Robert 


226 
220 
102 
357 
359 


Ramsay,  Dr.  (historian)  ...........................  276 

Randolph,  John  C.  F  ..............................      9 

Ranney,  Judge  Rufus  P  ..........................  312 

Ravenzon  (early  English  ironmaster)  ......    53 

Rawle,  Francis  .........................................  165 

Ray,  John  ................................................    86 

Raymond,  Philander  ...............................  224 

Read,  Hon.  Charles  ...................  156,  157,  158 

Reading,  John  .........................................  148 

Reaumur  (French  chemist)  ..................  96,  97 

Reed,  Charles  M  ......................................  224 

Reed,  Ezekiel  ...................................  448,  449 

Reese,  Jacob  ............................................  406 

Reese  &  Thomas  .....................................  195 

Reeves,  Benjamin  and  David  ..................  160 

Reeves,  Josiah  ........................................  333 

Reeves,  Samuel  J  ..............................  462,  466 

Reeves,  Thomas  .......................................  333 

Reeves,  Buck  &  Co  .................................  360 

Reis,  Brown,  Berger,  and  James  Ward...  230 
Renshaw,  John  A  ....................................  226 

Rentgen,  Clemens  .....................  193,  194,  217 

Reynolds,  General  James  L  .....................  196 

Reyuolds,  General  John  F  .......................  196 

Reynolds,  Major  Samuel  M  .....................  196 

Reynolds,  Admiral  William  .....................  196 

Rhodes,  Barnabas...'.  ................................  165 

Rice,  Jacob  ..............................................  192 

Richards,  Mrs.  Augustus  H  .....................  157 

Richards,  Jesse  .................................  158,  159 


Page 

Richards,  Louis,  Esq 159 

Richards,  Mark 159,  220,  256 

Richards,  Samuel 159 

Richards,  William 159 

Richards,  Earl  &  Co 220 

Richardson,  Richard 361 

Ridgely  family 253 

Ridgely,  Charles 204 

Ridgely,  Edward 204 

Rigby,  John 185 

Riggs,  Joseph 308 

Riggs,  J.,  &  Co 308 

Ritner,  Joseph,  Governor  of  Pa...  353,  355,  369 

Ritner,  Peter 353,  369 

Ritter,  George  K 223 

Roach,  John,  &  Son 444 

Robbins,  J 389 

Robbins,  Samuel  S 129 

Roberts,  Solomon  W 356,  357,  427,  431 

Robertson,  Mr.  (member  of  Parliament).  492 

Robeson,  Hon.  George  M 154 

Robeson,  Jonathan 154 

Robinson,  David 221 

Robinson,  James 288 

Robinson,  Captain  James 218 

Robinson,  Judge , 334 

Robinson,  L.  C 284 

Robinson,  Morris 158 

Robinson,  William,  Jr 228 

Rock,  James 35 

Rockwell,  E.  S 321 

Rodgers,  James 304,  305,  306 

Rodgers,  James,  &  Co 305 

Rodgers,  John  and  Jacob 383 

Roebuck,  Dr 53 

Rogers,  Professor  James  E.  Thorold....  39,  41 

42,  55 

Rogers  &  Burchlield 460 

Root  &  Wheeler 302 

Ross,  D.  S 315 

Ross,  David 268,  269,  288 

Ross,  George 184,  502 

Ross,  George,  &  Co 184 

Ross,  John 171 

Ross,  Randall 314 

Roup,  Jonas 226 

Rowland,  Mrs.  Harriet  M 193 

Rowland,  James 363 

Rowland,  James  and  Maxwell 193 

Rowland,  James,  &  Co y 389 

Rowland,  Thomas  F 445 

Rowland,  W.  &  H 389 

Rowland  &  Hunt 193 

Royer,  Daniel 208 

Royer,  John 208 

Royer,  John  (son  of  Daniel) 208 

Ruck,  John 115 

Ruggles,  George 113 

Rupp,  Isaac  D 180,  202 

Rush,  Dr.  Benjamin 166 

Russell,  B.  F.,  Esq 334,  335 


552 


PERSONAL   INDEX. 


Page 

Russell,  George  B : 324 

Russell,  Ralph 113,  114 

Russell,  Thomas...  241,  243,  245,  249,  251,  265 

Russell,  Thomas,  2d 251,  252 

Russell,  Thomas,  3d 252 

Russell,  William...  241,  242,  244,  245,  265,  503 

504 

Ruston,  John 241,  242,  246,  249 

Rutter,  John 236 

Rutter,  Thomas....  165,  166,  167,  170,  172,  175 


Rutter,  Thomas  (1785) 496 


St.  Glair,  General  Arthur 218,  222,  502 

Salters,  William 305 

Sandys,  George 105 

Saunders's  furnace 269 

Savage,  John 208 

Sawyer,  Harvey 312 

Say,  John 369 

Schliemann,  Dr.  Heinrich 12,  14 

Schmucker,  George 211 

Schoepf,  Dr.  John  D 187,  472,  496 

Schwartz,  Berthold 44 

Scofield,  Lewis  ....^ 291,  316 

Scofleld,  Mr.  (of  Milwaukee) 413 

Scott,  Joseph 222 

Scott,  Matthias 220 

Scott,  Sir  Walter 22,  40,  58 

Scranton,  George  W.  and  Selden  T 200 

Scranton,  Joseph  H 200 

Scrawley,  Lawrence 137 

Scull,  Nicholas 168, 169, 173,  468 

Scull,  William...  166,  169,  173,  176,  468,  473,  476 

Sellers,  William 309 

Shakespeare,  William 22 

Sharp  &  Roberts 491 

Sharpies,  Abraham 496 

Sharswood,  Dr.  William 273 

Shaw,  Abraham 108 

Sheffield,  Lord 382,  479 

Sheredine,  Daniel 252 

Shippen  &  McMurtrie *. 158 

Shoemaker,  B 178 

Shoemaker,  Charles 158 

Shoemaker,  Colonel  George 363,  474 

Shoenberger,  George 207 

Shoenberger,  G.  &  J.  H 389,  392,  393 

Shoenberger,  Peter 207 

Shoenberger,  Dr.  Peter..207,  208,  221,  229,  230 

270 

Shoenberger  &  Agnew 270 

Shorb,  Anthony 211 

Shreeve,  Paull  &  McCandless 309 

Shreeves,  Leven,  &  Brother 285 

Shryock,  John  K 221 

Shryock,  William  L 221 

Shumard,  Dr.  B.  F. 338 

Siemens,  Dr.  Charles  William 63,  419,  420 

421,  422,  423,  425 


Siemens,  Frederick 

Sinclair,  Sir  John 

Singer,  Hartman  &  Co. 
Singer,  Nimick  &  Co... 


Page 
3,  419 
...  60 
...  389 
...  390 


Slade,  Frederick  J 161,  421,  422 

Slocum,  Ebenezer  and  Benjamin 200 

Sloss,  Colonel  J.  W 295 

Sluyter,  Peter 163 

Smeaton,  John 53,  63 

Smedley,  Isaac 383 

Smiles,  Samuel  (historian) 37,  39,  40,  41 

43,  46,  47,  164 

Smith,  A.  J 312 

Smith,  Adam 480,  483,  486 

Smith,  Commodore 445 

Smith,  Edward 158 

Smith,  George  W 426,  438 

Smith  (historian  of  New  Jersey) 146 

Smith,  James 185,  502 

Smith,  Joseph 227 

Smith,  Richard 129 

Smith,  Thomas 183,  189 

Smith,  Dr.  William  Hooker 200 

Snelus,  George  J 405,  406 

Snowden,  Thomas,  Richard,  and  Edward  253 

Snyder,  Benjamin 158 

Snyder,  Colonel 202 

Spang,  Henry  S 211,  229 

Spang  &  Co 389 

Spang,  Chalfant  &  Co 229,  460 

Sparks,  John 305 

Spence,  T.  A 256 

Spencer  &  Co 312 

Spotswood,  Colonel  Alexander...  258,  259,  260 

261,  262,  267,  374,  502 

Stackpole,  William 223,  228 

Stacy,  Mahlon 155 

Stedman,  Charles  and  Alexander 180 

Stephens,  Edward  W 230 

Stephens,  Richard 117 

Stephenson,  George 63 

Sternbergh,  J.  H 337 

Sterrett,  William 210 

Stevens,  Francis  B 437,  438 

Stevens,  Colonel  John 426,  436 

Stevens,  Robert  L 436,  437 

Stevens,  Thaddeus 197,  198,  502 

Stevens  &  Paxton 198 

Stevenson,  Mr 185 

Stewart,  Charles 472 

Stewart,  David 221 

Stewart,  James 219 

Stewart,  John 192 

Stewart,  Richardson 255 

Stewart,  Robert  T 229 

Stewart,  Captain  William 230 

Stiegel,  Elizabeth 181 

Stiegel,  Henry  William 176,  179,  180,  181 

Stirling,  Lord  (William  Alexander)..  138,  149 

151,  152 

Stone,  Chisholm  &  Jones 313 


PERSONAL    INDEX. 


553 


Page 

Strickland,  William 365 

Strothman  Brothers 341 

Struthers,  John 301 

Struthers,  Thomas 301 

Stuart,  Henry 350 

Sturtevant,  Simon 46,  53 

Stuttle,  Amos 185 

Sutton,  James 200 

Sutton,  Leonard 332,  333 

Stuyvesant,  Petrus 233 

Swallow,  G.  C 334 

Swedenborg,  Emanuel 93,  234,  235,  249 

Sweet,  Dr.  William  M 423 

Swift,  Mr.  (of  Cincinnati) 413 

Swinburne,  Sir  John 71 

Swineford,  A.  P 320,  321,  322,  323,  324 

Swope  &  King 208 

T. 

Taylor,  George 170,  502 

Taylor,  Jacob 177 

Taylor,  James 273 

Taylor,  John  (of  Sarum  iron  works).  177,  178 

Taylor,  John  (son  of  John  Taylor) 178 

Taylor,  John  (of  Fayette  county,  Pa.)....  477 

Taylor,  Richard  Cowling 467,  469,  476 

Taylor,  W.  &  B.  F 176 

Taylor's  forge 268 

Templeton,  Samuel  P 192 

Thacher,  Dr.  James 120,  123,  124,  140 

Thomas,  Mr.  (of  Indianapolis) 413 

Thomas,  David 360,  361,  362,  455 

Thomas,  David,  Jr 362 

Thomas,  Gabriel 164,  233 

Thomas,  John 362 

Thomas,  Robert 294 

Thomas,  Samuel , 362,  453 

Thomas,  Sidney  Gilchrist...  405,  406,  408,  421 

Thompson,  George 8 

Thompson,  George  (another) 283 

Thompson,  James  R 391,  392 

Thompson,  Jonah  and  George 364 

Thornburg,  Robert,  &  Co 185 

Thoruburg  &  Arthur 185 

Thorndike  &  Drury 302 

Throop,  George 142 

Thurston,  George  H 391 

Thurston,  Robert  H 436 

Tilghman,  James 469,  472 

Timby,  Theodore  R 446 

Tingle  &  Sugden 390 

Tod,  David,  Governor  of  Ohio 311 

Torrey,  James 120 

Tower,  Jonas 329 

Townsend,  Peter 138,  139,  140,  141,  381 

Townseud,  Peter,  Jr 138,  381 

Townsend,  Peter,  3d 141 

Townsend,  Captain  Solomon 138,  142 

Townshend,  Charles  (member  of  Parlia- 
ment)   481 

Tracy,  C.  M Ill,  116,  119,  121 


Page 

Trago  &  Thomas 201 

Trevor  &  McClurg 218 

Trexler,  Reuben 207 

Trimble,  David  and  John 285,  286 

Trowbridge,  C.  A 323 

Truman  &  Co 216 

Trumbull,  Jonathan,  Governor  of  Conn...  380 

Tucker,  John 373 

Tucker,  Hon.  John 432,  433 

Tucker,  Tempest 204 

Tunner,  Professor  Peter  Ritter  von 95 

Tuper  &  McCowan 227,  383 

Turnbull,  William 214,  475 

Turnbull  &  Marmie 214 

Turner,  Daniel 206 

Turner,  Rev.  Edward 35 

Turner,  Joseph 155,  156,  159,  168 

Turner,  Thomas 96,  97 

Turner,  William 477 

Tuttle,  Rev.  Dr.  Joseph  F...  147, 148, 149,  150 

151,  152 

Tyrrell,  Asahel 312 

U. 

Updegraff,  Abner 227 

Ure,  Dr.  Andrew 90,  525 

V. 

Valentine,  C.  1 403 

Valentines  &  Co 206 

Valentines  &  Thomas 206 

Valle,  Felix 409 

Van  Buren,  Jarvis 358 

Van  Cullen,  Peter  (Van  Collet) 47 

Van  Doren,  J.  L 335 

Van  Wie,  Peter 431 

Vaughan,  Colonel  Joseph 237,  238 

Veech,  Judge  James 213,  226,  270 

Verlit,  M 28 

Vickroy,  Joseph 220 

Vickroy,  Thomas 219 

Vignoles,  Charles  B 436 

Vincent,  Francis 238,  239 

Vincent  steel  works 173,  178,  382 

W. 

Wagstaff,  Hugh 491 

Wahl,  Dr.  William  H 194 

Waldo,  Samuel 127 

Walker,  Daniel 174 

Walker,  Lewis  M 158 

Wallace,  James 183,  189 

Waples,  Colonel  William  D 238 

Ward,  Captain  E.  B....  318,  322,  324,  328,  330 

409,  411,  413,  417 

Ward,  James 230 

Ward,  Timothy 149 

Ward  &  Colton 137 

Ward  &  McMurtry 285 

Ware,  Horace 293,  294 

Warner,  Jonathan 312 


554 


PERSONAL    INDEX. 


Washington,  "a  certain  Mr."...  251,  252,  504 
Washington,  Captain  Augustine 246,  247 

251,  261,  262,  263,  264,  265,  452,  502,  503,  504 
Washington,  Augustine,  2d..  264,  265,  502,  504 
Washington,  George 152,  175,  246,  251,  252 

262,  264,  382,  468,  502,503,  504 

Washington,  Lawrence 251,  264,  502,  504 

Washington,  Sarah 264,  504 

Watson's  Annals 178 

Watt,  James 53,  63 

Watts,  David 211 

Wayne,  General  Anthony 214 

Webb,  James 189 

Webb,  Joseph 196 

Webster,  Isaac 253 

Webster,  John  Lee 253 

Wedding,  Dr.  Hermann 78,  521,  522 

Weiss,  Colonel  Jacob 474 

Welcker,  Dietrich 176 

Weld,  Henry  Thomas 434,  441 

Welles,  Albert  (Washington  genealogist)..  264 
Welles,  Gideon  (Secretary  of  the  Navy)..  445 

Wendel,  Dr.  August 77 

Westcott,  Thompson 465 

Wetmore  &  Havens 389 

Wharton,  Thomas,  Jr 470 

Wheeler,  Rev.  Dr.  Francis  B 444 

Whetcroft,  William 255 

Whetstone  (blacksmith) , 473 

Whitaker,  George  P 252 

White,  James  D 222,  223 

White,  John 369 

White,  Josiah 356,  360,  363,  364,  465,  475 

White,  Leonard 317 

White  &  Hazard 363,  364,  465,  466,  475 

Whiteley,  Henry 250,  251,  264,  265 

Whiteside,  James  A 290 

Whiting,  Ruggles 223,  228 

Whitings,  Messrs 229 

Whitney,  Silas 426 

Whittlesey,  Asaph 302 

Whittlesey,  Colonel  Charles 302 

Wickliffe,  Robert 283 

Wightwick,  John 245,  265,  452,  503 

Wilcox,  John 272 

Wilder,  General  J.  T 291 

Wilder,  Shubal 222,  223,  448,  449 

Wilkeson,  John 302,  310,  372 

Wilkeson  &  Co .,, 372 

Wilkeson,  Wilkes  &  Co 310,  373 

Wilkins,  Bishop 47 

Wilkinson,  Israel 1 127 


Page 

Wilkinson,  Jeremiah 134,  448 

Wilkinson,  Sir  John  Gardner 66 

Williams,  Andrew 391 

Williams,  Jonas 139,  140 

Williams,  Joseph 174 

Williams,  Robert. 284 

Wilson,  General 293,  294 

Wilson,  Mr.  (Indiana  pioneer) 315 

Winey,  Jacob 496 

Winslow,  Hon.  John  F...  409,  444,  445,  446,  447 

Winslow  &  Griswold 413,  444,  445,  446 

Winslow,  Griswold  &  Holley..... 411 

Winslow,  Griswold  &  Morrell 410 

Winter,  Elizabeth 508 

Winter,  Hannah 508 

Winter,  Nancy 508 

Winter,  William 508 

Winthrop,  John,  Governor  of  Mass..  108,  109 

Winthrop,  John,  Jr 108,  109,  113,  118 

Wisselman  and  Cobelly 191 

Wistar,  Caspar 236 

Witherby,  E.  T 294 

Wolfe,  C.,  &  Co 317 

Wood,  Alan .-. 239 

Wood,  Captain  James 312 

Wood,  James 383 

Wood,  James,  &  Co 423 

Wood,  John 383 

Wood's  Treatise  on  Railroads 426,  438 

Woodin,  Abner  or  Peter 129 

Woods,  William 390 

Woolman,  Uriah 178 

Worden,  Lieutenant  (U.  S.  N.) 445,  446 

Wright,  Colonel  Gardiner  H 238,  239 

Wright,  Hon.  Samuel  G 158,  238 

Wright,  Thomas 72 

Wurtz,  Samuel..., 215 

Wurtz,  William  and  Maurice 473 

Y. 

Yard,  Benjamin 159,  160 

Yarranton,  Audrew 36,  49 

Yoder,  John 171 

Young,  Rev.  Daniel 305 

Young,  Dr 338 

Young,  Dr.  Edward 49 

Young,  John  W 345 

Young,  V.  B.,  Esq 282 

Z. 

Zane's  furnace 267,  268 

Zimmerman,  Captain  Jacob 180 


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